Throwback Thursday Musical Showcase: Jan Peerce Sings "Because" on the Ed Sullivan Show

Today we're turning the calendar way way back 72 years to 1952 when Jan Peerce appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show to sing Because, a song that was a regular part of most weddings.

Peerce, who was born Yehoshua Pinkhes Perelmuth in New York, was an accomplished performer on the operatic and Broadway concert stages, in solo recitals, and as a recording artist. Peerce became the brother-in-law of fellow American tenor Richard Tucker when Sara Perelmuth, Peerce’s only sister, married Tucker, who was then a part-time cantor, in 1936.

Enjoy!

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  #Throwback Thursday     #TBT

Throwback Thursday Comedy Showcase: Victor Borge and the Opera Singer

We never get tired of watching the mischievous piano comedy antics of the great Victor Borge, the Danish comedian, conductor and pianist who achieved great popularity in radio and television in the United States and Europe. 

His blend of music and comedy earned him the nickname "The Clown Prince of Denmark","The Unmelancholy Dane", and "The Great Dane."
 
He was born as Borge Rosenbaum to a Jewish family in Copenhagen. His parents were both musicians. He began piano lessons at the age of two, and it was soon apparent that he was a prodigy.

In this video clip Borge turns an operatic performance by Marilyn Mulvey into a hilarious operatic comedy.

Enjoy!

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#Throwback Thursday      #TBT

Throwback Thursday Comedy Classics: Sid Caesar in Gallipacci, a Spoof of the Opera Pagliacci

First telecast on Caesar's Hour on October 10, 1955 on NBC, this kinescoped sketch is a take-off on the Italian opera Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo. Sid plays the role of "Gallipacci" ("Canio" in the real opera) an actor in a traveling Italian comedia dell'arte troupe during the late 19th century. 

His wife "Rosa" ("Nedda" in the actual opera), who is played by singer and comedienne Nanette Fabray, falls in love with fellow actor "Emilio" (the opera's "Silvio" character), performed by Carl Reiner, and they make plans to elope. Sid sings a rendition of songs in a gibberish Italian dialect which he picked up in his youth from waiting tables at his father's 24-hour blue-collar diner in Yonkers, New York. 

Straying off of the real opera's musical score just a bit, we hear hilariously bastardized renditions of Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Cole Porter's Begin the Beguine, and Take Me Out to the Ball Game among others. Howie Morris (Ernest T. Bass from "The Andy Griffith Show") is "Vesuvio" (whose real opera character is "Tonio") and he performs a parody song and dance rountine to the tune If I Know What You Know. 

In one of the most famous "saves" in the history of live television, Sid was supposed to paint a teardrop on his cheek when the mascara pencil broke at the beginning of his nonsense rendition of Just One of Those Things. Not breaking his stride, Sid proceeds to pick up one of Nanette's lip brushes and paints an unscripted tic-tac-toe board on his face.  

The grand finale concluded with a variation of the song The Yellow Rose of Texas after Gallipacci takes care of the situation along the lines of a Mafia hit. Also, in the early days of live television, one time "specials" which pre-empted regular series programs were initially called "spectaculars". Listen for a young Don Pardo introducing the sketch.

Enjoy!

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#Throwback Thursday    #TBT

Unexpected Traces in Jewish Places: Welcoming Shabbat with Operatic Versions of Adon Olam

Last Friday, congregants of the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York experienced an unusual conclusion to the Kabbalat Shabbat service.

Peter Gelb, General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera, attended the service, so Cantor Azi Schwartz took some operatic license and and paid tribute to the greatest operatic high tenor arias, incorporating them into his version of Adon Olam.

If you recognize the arias and the operas they come from, please share the information in the comments section below this post.

Here's one to start: La Donna e Mobile, from Verdi's Rigoletto.
And the others????

Enjoy, and Shabbat shalom!


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Here Come the Rosh Hashana Videos - Shana Tova by the Israeli Opera

The Israeli Opera, formerly known as the New Israeli Opera, is the principal opera company of Israel. It was founded in 1985 after lack of Israeli government funding led to the demise of the Israel National Opera. 

Since 1994 the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center has been its main performance venue. The company also founded the Israeli Opera Festival which has performed large-scale outdoor productions, originally at Caesarea, and from 2010 in Masada.

Meitar Opera Sudio is a practical study and performance program for young Israeli opera singers who graduated from any given music academy and who are on the verge of embarking on an operatic career. The major goal of the Opera Studio is to nurture operatic talent in Israel and to help young opera singers to work in their profession. The Opera Studio program is aimed at young Israeli opera singers who are willing to hone their craft, further their studies on an ongoing basis and gain stage experience, thus getting ready for a full-fledged operatic career.

In this new video, the young Israeli opera singers of the Meitar Opera Studio use their operatic voices to convey a very timely greeting - Shana tova, sh'nat shalom v'ahava -- Wishing you a good year, a year of peace and love.

Enjoy!

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Jewish Traces in Unexpected Places: Serbian Primadonna Sings Hava Nagila at Kennedy Center

Jadranka Jovanović is a primadonna of Opera in the National Theatre in Belgrade, Serbia. 

She was born in Belgrade, and she is one of the most popular artists in the classic music in her country with a respected international career.

So when she made an appearance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. she sang operatic selections as expected.

But can you guess what song she also chose to include in the concert? You guessed it. Hava Nagila.

We have included 45 versions of Hava Nagila from around the world among the 1500 Jewish Humor Central posts since 2009, but this is the first by a classical opera singer in a concert hall. We think it's funny to see this Jewish folk song given the full operatic treatment. We hope you'll agree.

Enjoy!

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Israel Chamber Music Concert Interrupted by Symphonic Flash Mob

Guests at the opening exercises of Shalem College in October were treated to an unexpected musical interlude: a symphonic flash mob, choreographed by Israel’s cutting-edge Revolution Orchestra. 

Under the direction of composer and Shalem faculty member Roy Oppenheim, who will teach music as part of the Core Curriculum, the spontaneous performance of a selection from Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King interrupted the chamber music concert in progress. 

Shalem students and faculty, starting with a lone bassoon, filed into the room and took over the stage. Then a soprano started singing the Habanera aria from the opera Carmen. The spontaneous number concluded with a grand finale: Shalem students and faculty joining the musicians on stage, percussion instruments in hand.

Shalem College (Hebrew: המרכז האקדמי שלם‎, ha-Merkaz ha-Akademi Shalem) is Israel's first liberal arts college, located in Jerusalem, Israel. It was established in January 2013, following accreditation by the Council for Higher Education in Israel.

A private, undergraduate degree-granting institution, Shalem College has pioneered the use of a required core curriculum for all students. The centerpiece of the college’s academic community, the Core—which includes courses in philosophy, history, the natural and social sciences, literature, and the fine arts—is unique in its integration of the study of key Western and Jewish texts.

Enjoy the concert!

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(A tip of the kippah to Sheila Zucker and a copy of the Kindle Editon of our new book, Israel is a Funny Country, for bringing this video to our attention.

Regina Resnik in "Thirst" - A Classic Jewish Joke

Regina Resnik, a dominant mezzo-soprano with the Metropolitan and other operas from the 1940s throgh the 1970s, has also had a career as an actress and director. Together with her son, Michael Philip Davis, she recently produced Colors of the Diaspora, a compilation of three full-length concerts offering a kaleidoscope of Jewish classical song and operatic excerpts.

The collection, in addition to many musical compositions, includes a comic dialogue between Resnik and Davis called "Thirst," in which they act out dramatically what amounts to a very old Jewish joke.

The sketch runs about seven minutes in length, but we think it's worth watching to see the punch line coming. And we don't have to warn you about the punch line, because unlike the punch lines of other Jewish jokes, it is very family-friendly.  Enjoy!

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The True Story of Carmen: A Klezmer Parody

Big Galute is a klezmer band, but it's more than a klezmer band.

Big Galute roams the entire vast and exciting musical world of klezmer music, Yiddish theater music, Sephardic music from Spain, Levantine music from the eastern Mediterranean, and the works of Jewish classical music composers. 

They are five musicians with backgrounds in klezmer music, classical music, jazz and blues, early music. They sing, play the clarinet, and the violin and viola, and instruments of the lute and guitar families, accordion, percussion, and bass.

And they also tell jokes and perform original comic songs and parodies. Today we'll share one of their parodies of the opera Carmen. Georges Bizet's opera takes place in Spain, but the Big Galute troupe has inside information to prove that the original location was really a shtetl, and how Carmen ended up in Spain is another story.

As the troupe performs their version of the Habanera, we learn that

That's right folks, Carmen was from the shtetl.

A shayne maydel who wouldn't settle.

Not any Tevye or Dov or Hershel would do for her.

She was too commercial.

We hope you enjoy the parody.

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