COMPOSERS: Various
LABELS: DG
WORKS: Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana; Climb Ev'ry Mountain
CATALOGUE NO: 471 575-2
We come to the finalists in this year's competition for the coveted title of 'Christmas Disc from Hell'. Step forward in third place Placido Domingo, whose all-new collection of SACRED SONGS (DG 471 575-2, £16.99) marks a new nadir in Domingo's career.
It opens with a taste-defying (and theologically suspect) arrangement of the Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana as an Ave Maria for the Spanish tenor to share with Sissel (a dyed-blonde Norwegian elf apparently famous for adding her 'otherworldly vocalising' to the soundtrack of Titanic) and encompasses an effortful assault upon Richard Rodgers's 'Climb Ev'ry Mountain' (on the spurious basis that 'in a sense all music is sacred').