I had seen the band Muse on the Late Show with David Letterman and later, on Saturday Night Live. They sort of grew on me and so I downloaded their album. One track in particular struck me while I was out running--I actually listened to it four times in succession. The symphonic scope of their music really struck me, particularly the middle section of "I belong to you".
Cool stuff, I thought (despite the fact that it evidently appears on the New Moon soundtrack).
I was driving home from some errands today and heard the Met's broadcast of La fille du Regiment.* In the midst of some dialogue, one of the characters sung the middle section of this song! "How odd," I thought "that Donizetti would have borrowed something from a popular music group some 200 years into the future!"
Well, after a quick bit of Googling and YouTubing, I found out that it's actually an aria from Saint-Saens' Samson et Dalila. I found Elina Garanca singing the aria on YouTube:
The strange thing is that I didn't recognize the aria in the Muse tune (other than to observe that it sounded "classical"), but the instant I heard the shimmering string introduction to the orchestra, I realized I had played this aria within the past few years!
*Incidentally, Juan Diego Florez is pretty unbelievable:
Cool stuff, I thought (despite the fact that it evidently appears on the New Moon soundtrack).
I was driving home from some errands today and heard the Met's broadcast of La fille du Regiment.* In the midst of some dialogue, one of the characters sung the middle section of this song! "How odd," I thought "that Donizetti would have borrowed something from a popular music group some 200 years into the future!"
Well, after a quick bit of Googling and YouTubing, I found out that it's actually an aria from Saint-Saens' Samson et Dalila. I found Elina Garanca singing the aria on YouTube:
The strange thing is that I didn't recognize the aria in the Muse tune (other than to observe that it sounded "classical"), but the instant I heard the shimmering string introduction to the orchestra, I realized I had played this aria within the past few years!
*Incidentally, Juan Diego Florez is pretty unbelievable: