Elsewhere she sounds like Bonnie Tyler singing Bonnie Raitt songs
Elsewhere, she sounds like Bonnie Tyler singing Bonnie Raitt songs. But the most common comparison that she elicits is with Etheridge- fan Bruce Springsteen, not just because of her sound, but because of her romanticised reminiscences of small-town dreams and sexual awakenings. Her first song at the Shepherd's Bush Empire on Tuesday was her new single, "I Want to Come Over", which is simply Tina Turner's "The Best" with better lyrics. Melissa Etheridge's 1993 album is called Yes I Am, which is a cheeky way of coming out of the closet; last year's follow-up had an equally eyebrow-raising title, Your Little Secret (Island).
The band play skilful, anthemic rock, guaranteed to grab a Grammy They could be a lustier, gutsier Bon Jovi or Bryan Adams. But the singer is not a good ole boy from Kansas, she's a good ole girl. What's more, she's a good ole girl who likes other good ole girls. And in the middle is the raw-voiced, long-haired lead singer, wearing a denim shirt with "USA" stitched in big letters on the back. The lead guitarist on the left has a goatee beard and a glitter-patterned guitar; the bassist on the right is as anonymous as bassists tend to be. BEFORE a backdrop of sagging drapes, like incompetently assembled tents, is a drummer with a vest stretched over his muscular torso.
If you thought of going, don't.'Samson': ROH, WC2 (0171 304 4000), continues Mon & Sat 'Boheme': Royal Albert Hall, SW7 (0171 589 8212), to Sat.. and whoever thought the Albert Hall an appropriate space for a piece where three out of four acts are intimate needs their head examined. In fact it's a lamentable introduction to opera for all those newcomers Gubbay claims to be attracting: the design is poor, the production utter tosh, the acting coarse, the singing adequate but so grotesquely amplified it sounds like the special effects at a ghost train ... What gives the promoter of the project, Raymond Gubbay, the right to that definite article I can't imagine - perhaps the ghost of Puccini appeared in a vision and laid hands on him - but the result is nothing to get excited about.
But even now, it is some act.Alas there's no potential, except for hype, to report in something that opened at the Albert Hall on Thursday calling itself The Centenary La Boheme - as though there aren't countless productions of Boheme running throughout the world, this year as any other. He was radiant, charismatic, with an easy manner (perhaps too easy in songs where he could have squeezed more meaning from the text). He hasn't as yet the intensity of a Holzmair or a Fischer-Dieskau, and he isn't en- couraged in that direction by an accompanist, Charles Spencer, whose pianism is supportive but soft They both need to tighten up their act. If you haven't, I should explain that he was born with thal- idomide-type disabilities. There's no point in denying that they present something for an audience to come to terms with, as they obviously do for the singer him- self. Performance is after all a holistic compound of body, soul and mind. But if there's one lesson to be learnt from the singing culture of fat sopranos and emaciated tenors, it's that the body you see is ultimately a product of the soul you hear; and 10 minutes with Thomas Quasthoff proved that beyond doubt.