Emma Shapplin crashes and burns in Haifa

November 10, 2009 - 10:07 PM by · 5 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Music, Pop Culture 

Emma+ShapplinUsually, when touring musical acts make their way to Israel, they rise to the occasion and put on a stellar show. Just look at Paul McCartney, Faith No More, Leonard Cohen – despite the lofty price tags, they delivered with consumately professional concerts that left audiences thrilled.

But there’s another kind of concert thrill – the train wreck. Even more surprising is the train conductor in this case – French pop soprano Emma Shapplin, who launched a world tour last week with two shows, in Haifa and Tel Aviv.

Now we’re not talking about someone who you’d expect to be erratic, like grungy Pete Doherty. Shapplin has a distinguished track record of dazzling performances featuring spine-tingling vocals. Her 2003 show in Caesarea was so outstanding that she released it as a live album and DVD.

However, she’s had a few years between albums, and when I talked to her a few weeks ago, she seemed somewhat hesitant about rushing out to perform her new album Macadam Flower ahead of time.

“When we received the offer to do these two shows, I thought, ‘well, it’s a bit premature. The album isn’t finished yet, we haven’t started rehearsing,’” she said.

It turns out that Shapplin’s apprehensions were well justified. According to a review in The Jerusalem Post of the first night’s show by my colleague, Amanda Borschel-Dan, Shappelin was like a deer in the headlights.

Aside from obvious technical difficulties with microphones, etc., Shapplin was confused, forgetting words and musical phrases, once to the point of restarting a number twice and waving away the accompanist who was playing “a different arrangement… why did Shapplin decide to perform a series of classical soprano arias when she was obviously under-prepared?

While the concert-goers were justifiably unsatisfied with the performance, I found myself thinking that it was refreshing to see someone screw up in public. We’re so conditioned to perfection that any blemishes are considered to be horrible miscues and an affront to art. On the contrary, false starts, flubbed cues, and unreached notes are performance art at its most riveting.

Shapplin may have had an off night, or maybe she’s fallen off of her pedestal and is just showing her humanity. Rather than booing her, audiences should be embracing her flaws as well as her talent.

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