Cross Over, Beethoven - Newsweek

While pop stars go classical, classical stars go pop. Their records are selling,but are they any good ?
 
When Michael Bolton came out with a CD of arias in January, it took a monumental effort not to ruch to judgment. Then he went on "The Nanny" to promote it.
In the episode, Tran Drescher arrives at his CD launch party and tells him. "I just loooove your voice. It's so soulful and raspy." A raspy tenor ! That's the first sign of trouble. The second is when Bolton approaches an enormous microphone - real opera singers don't need them. Then Bolton launches into a warped, strained rendition of Puccini's "Nessun Dorma." Drescher spends the song scratching herself because her dress makes her itch - that's supposed to be the joke. But the real joke is that Bolton's CD was No.1 on the Billboard classical charts for six weeks, and is now holding steady at No.2.
 
Britain's favorite violin prodigy, 19-year-old Vanessa-Mae, is Bolton's equally bizarre converse - a talented classical musician who's gone pop. Celebrity came at 15, after a video that featured her playing a techno-pop version of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in a wet T shirt. She just worked with Celine Dion's producer on "Storm," a new pseudo-pop album due out in June, with includes a techno jam on Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons." In a new video, she's all about pouty lips and phonily ecstatic pelvic thrusts, a sex kitten sawing away on an electric violin and flying through the air in a skimpy dress, singing Donna Summer's "I Feel Love." "If a small minority thinks I'm bastardizing classical music, they're totally wrong," she says. "When you are brave enough to do something new, people are always threadened by it." Her first pop album, "The violin player" (1995), sold about 300.000 copies in the United States and 3.2 million copies internationally. Within two weeks ot its release, her all-classical "Classical Album 1" (1996) sold a half-million copies world, becoming classical music's fastest-selling solo album ever.
 
Can wet T shirts and "Nanny" tie-ins rescue classical music? The answer's still far from clear. The new "crossover" trend has produced some genuinely good music - and a lot that's just awful. But there is little doubt it's here to stay. After years of blissfully ignoring the market, and then panicking as sales plummeted, classical labels have finaly given in to the need to mix entertainment with art.
 
Crossover now accounts for almost all of classical music's best selling records. A modestly successful crossover album will sell 150.000 to 200.000 copies, while the most successful classical albums sell 50.000 to 75.000 copies. Clearly the classical industry had to do something. It is failing to find new listeners while its core audience is aging and shrinking.