Every year Luciano Pavorotti gives a benefit concert with a bunch
of other performers. This year Pavorotti and Friends was
supporting the children of Guatemala and Kosovo. There were a
bunch of different groups there from around the world: B.B. King,
Joe Cocker, Mariah Carey, Gloria Estafan, Ricky Martin (formerly
of Menudo!), Renato Zero, Zucchero, and a bunch of other lame
ones (like Lionel Richie and an italian version of Celine Dion).
Lots of times Pavorotti would come out and do a duet with the
group, which was pretty cool, but if the group was singing in
English he would go ahead and sing in italian anyway, so you were
never sure what song he was actually singing. A lot of the groups
were really good, including Mariah Carey and Gloria Estafan.
Ricky Martin sang a song called Mamma that had Naomi screaming
"MAMMA!" between the versus. It was pretty funny. The
place was packed and it was telelvised, so a funny thing happened
when they would go to commercials on the TV program: nothing.
During commercial breaks the hostess would just say, "We'll
be right back", and then everybody just stood around for a
couple of minutes until it picked up again. It was kinda weird.
We had a lot of fun with Pavorotti, because he always has this
confused look his face, like he's not sure, "should I eat
now or sing now?" He can sing anything and it sounds good.
He really is amazing, but still pretty funny. We couldn't see the
stage too well from where we were sitting, so I had to take
pictures of the JumboTron.
Michael Jackson was supposed to be at the concert, but he didn't
show. But you still had hundreds of these weird Michael Jackson
look-alikes walking around. There were a huge amount of Michael
fans. You can see the guy in the background was really geared up
for this event. The joke was that Pavorotti accidently ate him
backstage. "No Pavorotti, not eat! Sing!" Eva, our
friend in the lower left, went through the whole concert, for
three hours, screaming in my ear, "I want Michael! Where's
Michael! Ti voglio bene Michael!" over and over. It was
really embarassing, and we pretended like we didn't know her.
During a Lionel Richie song that was all soft and mellow,
"Where's Michael! I want Michael!", and everybody kept
turning around to see who the idot was screaming. And for the
first two hours, a lady in front of us kept turning around and
saying, "Michael non c'e'!" (Michael's not here!)
Everytime Eva started screaming. It was nuts.