The Night When Luciano Pavarotti & James Brown Sang “It’s a …

Luciano Pavarot­ti and James Brown are remem­bered as larg­er-than-life per­form­ers with an almost myth­i­cal-seem­ing pres­ence and dis­tinc­tive­ness. But it was­n’t so very long ago that both of them were active — and even active onstage togeth­er. In the video above, the King of the High Cs and the God­fa­ther of Soul get togeth­er on “It’s a Man’s World” in 2002. It hap­pened at the penul­ti­mate Pavarot­ti & Friends con­cert, one of a series of year­ly ben­e­fit shows that ran between 1992 and 2003, and also fea­tured the likes of Andrea Bocel­li, Grace Jones, Sting, and Lou Reed.

“It’s a remark­able per­for­mance on so many lev­els,” writes Tom Tei­cholz at Forbes.com. “James Brown is in top form, his voice strong and pure. He com­mands the stage, and he dom­i­nates — he is in every sense an equal to Pavarot­ti, who sings in Ital­ian with great sub­tle­ty, finesse, and emo­tion. The video is filled with moments of grace — such as when Brown, with a mag­is­te­r­i­al wave of his arm cedes the stage to Pavarot­ti to sing his solo, or when Brown says ‘my Bible says Noah made the Ark’ as if it was tru­ly HIS Bible.”

What’s more, this is hard­ly the James Brown only slight­ly exag­ger­at­ed by Eddie Mur­phy in those Sat­ur­day Night Live hot tub sketch­es a cou­ple of decades ear­li­er. “Brown’s per­for­mance is not about his staged the­atrics, not about his danc­ing, not even real­ly about Brown’s trade­mark grunts and growls,” Tei­cholz writes. “This is about singing and get­ting the song across,” a mis­sion cer­tain­ly not hin­dered by the kind of of orches­tral back­ing they have. “It’s a Man’s World” might seem like the kind of song you “could­n’t sing today,” at least if you take its title at face val­ue. But in any case, how many singers today would want to be sub­ject to com­par­i­son with this par­tic­u­lar ren­di­tion if they did so?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pavarot­ti Sings with Lou Reed, Sting, James Brown and Oth­er Friends

Aretha Franklin Takes Over for an Ail­ing Luciano Pavarot­ti & Sings Puccini’s “Nes­sun Dor­ma” at the Gram­mys (1998)

Rare Video Cap­tures 29-Year-Old Luciano Pavarot­ti in One of His Ear­li­est Record­ed Per­for­mances (1964)

Two Leg­ends: Weird Al Yankovic “Inter­views” James Brown (1986)

The Best Com­mer­cial Ever? James Brown Sells Miso Soup (1992)

Is Opera Part of Pop Cul­ture? Pret­ty Much Pop #15 with Sean Spyres

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.