MY MOST recent viewing, one I have repeatedly viewed for the last 3 weeks, is KATHERINE JENKINS BELIEVE LIVE CONCERT AT THE O2. Jenkins is a classically-trained Welsh opera singer who was successfully cross-over'd into the pop field. She made younger people or at least mid-lifers who don't care a whet about Debussy, or the conductor Claudio Abaddo, or Pavarotti - to take notice of opera. Jenkin's physical attributes helped tremendously to parlay her popularity into two musical genres. She looked like a very well-endowed blond Playboy centerfold, with willowy eyes, very generous cleavage, golden hair and highly sensuous lips. Before her ascendance in the classical charts, she's very popular with the British armed forces who're stationed overseas to help support the war against Islamic terrorism. Jenkins always salutes these brave men in her appearances.
The most strimking number in the O2 concert is the singing of WHO WANTS TO LIVE FOREVER, which was composed by Queen during the early 1980's. Queen's F. Mercury sang it originally but it was an almost forgettable piece buried under the extensive Queen canon. The song was scored for the film THE HIGHLANDER, which I haven't ever saw. Highlander came out around 1982, and the song helped in making poignant the implication of Highlander's story - that of an immortal warrior who will have to endure the passing of his beloved wife because he will have to live and wander until the end of time. In Jenkin's concert, the song was playacted with a Gladiator's theme, she being the potentate who'll raised her thumb to signal the fatal blow. Its easy to forget Queen's Who Want To Live when heard on a record or radio. But Jenkin's made the song her own and lend it a glorious but sorrowful gravitas. Yes, who do indeed wants to live forever - not me, not you, not the Wandering Jew....
