This hasn’t happened since Frasier was on the air, but there was an opera-sitcom convergence last night. I don’t know who was the singer in the opera recording played on The Office (Jim played it so Dwight couldn’t hear him), but the aria was from Martha by Friederich Von Flotow, a once-popular comic opera whose big tenor aria used to be very big with tenors, both in the original German (“Ach, so fromm”) and, in the recording heard last night, in Italian (“M’ Apparì Tutto Amor”).
Here’s an audio/visual recording (a short film made in the early days of sound movies) by the star Italian tenor Tito Schipa.
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Thanks, that's one of my faves. Pavarotti did it well too.
Thanks. In the early days of sound movies (1930s) a lot of opera films were made in Europe. Opera singers were the performing artists of the day — most people loved opera back then. And now they also became actors in films in which an opera performance was the backdrop for the main plot, usually a love story. A lot of clips from these old movies are on YouTube — a case of modern technology bringing the past to life — and a treat for those who like hearing and seeing these older singers.