I went to the concert by the 3 Great Tenors at the National Kasumigaoka Stadium—the concert whose most expensive seats cost 70,000¥5,000. Since my wife was not feeling well, we took a taxi, but the surrounding area was gridlocked, and people who had got out of their taxis were running toward the stadium one after another. We too got out shortly before the stadium and walked.
At the venue I first tried to buy a program, only to find another enormous line. The shops selling stadium T-shirts and the like were empty and had more staff, yet apparently no one thought of selling programs there. Meanwhile, the people at the program stand were frantic, fumbling with banknotes as they exchanged money.
While all this was going on, the 1 piece began. Just as we were about to enter, an attendant shouted loudly, “Please wait until the interval between pieces!”—from inside the venue. From inside! I groaned. When the 1 piece ended, the staircase we were directed to was 1 stairways away from the correct one, and the staff seemed thoroughly confused.
The program claimed the acoustics were impeccable, but they too were outrageous. It was like listening to shortwave radio. The microphone was too close to the singers, so the pickup level changed whenever a singer moved even slightly. The sound distorted sharply; it was dreadful.
Yet artistry is astonishing. Just as a great performance can still move us on a restored old SP recording, the 3 Great Tenors were indeed extraordinary. The encore “Like the Flow of the River” seemed slightly awkward for them to sing because of the lyrics, leaving the performance somewhat unresolved. The audience also failed to sing despite being invited to “sing together.”
Still, the woman beside me, who had brought a high-school-aged daughter, cried out delightedly, “Oh, it’s shirazu shirazu!” Perhaps because of that incomplete feeling, they repeated the entire final medley of the second-half program from the beginning—Bernstein’s Maria through Tonight and so on—and the encores lasted nearly 1 hour. Watching them, I thought they truly loved singing. (Then again, hearing that woman tell her daughter, “See, this is how much extra they give you!” made me wonder whether market research had simply found that Japanese audiences are satisfied by long encores and they were following it.)
And so, my conclusion:
Great performers really are great. No matter how poorly the venue is managed, even if sandwich vendors roam about calling, “Beer and sandwiches! How about beer and sandwiches?”, and no matter how bad the acoustics are, the power of artistry can still move people.
Incidentally, I also watched the broadcast on July 7, but the live performance was definitely better!
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