Walking back to the car park, I thought aloud to my concert companions how Salonga could follow Leonard Bernstein's footsteps (his Joy of Music and his Young People's Concert series helped popularize the classics among American children by using the then young medium of television). I noticed three videographers onstage recording the entire concert at Philamlife auditorium and took their presence to mean that "FILMharmoniKa" will soon air on TV. That means a wider audience can be reached.
Salonga is a good communicator. He is not shy about turning to face the audience between numbers to pick up the mic and annotate a piece before it is performed. It is a format that will help create and mold a new audience that will consider concert-going a vital part of their lives.
My hope is in his 2011 season, he will add, pound for pound, more classics in the orchestra's repertoire. May he strike a balance between crowd-pleasers like last night's "Star Wars Suite," "James Bond Theme," among others, and the musical wealth of the ages that is little seen and heard live. We see the makings of another sort of champion if he achieves this.
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"It’s an outrage and a total disgrace to pay a boxer a million dollars just to have him punch someone on the nose while musicians can hardly make a living. Even if I were given a ticket to the Ali-Frazier fight, I wouldn’t see it it.” -- Antonia Brico, American conductor in during a 1975 presscon in Manila
-- A sports writer covering the Pacquaio-Margarito fight in Texas
The Pacquiao-Margarito fight in Texas, USA, once more put to test the strength and status of the Filipino boxer as the greatest boxing hero for all time.
Pacquiao’s greatness is witnessed in less than two hours--sometimes less than 30-minutes--by millions all over the world every time he faces a new opponent.
Coming from a poor family who has seen the many humiliating faces of poverty, Pacquiao has found a way out of third world status by boxing his way to world fame.
Aside from his superhero status, he has amassed untold wealth, dizzying fame and adulations and has conveniently metamorphosed from boxer to product endorser, aspiring singer, actor and now congressman of his Mindanao province. He is husband to a beautiful wife, father to healthy children and a good son to a mother who brought him up despite her own economic and marital woes in the past.
From the way he was and is now, Pacquiao is a role model , a legitimate boxing hero and a candidate for greatness which many think he acquired already.
Do other Filipinos acquire fame and fortune and qualities of greatness the way Pacquiao did.?
If the boxing glove was Pacquao’s instrument, the power of the pen was Jose Rizal’s greatest weapon and he used it to expose the atrocities of the Spanish rulers and in the process acquired greatness and a national hero status.
But if there are heroes in the boxing arena, there are also unsung heroes in the performing arts.
Iloilo-born Filipino tenor Otoniel Gonzaga was reaping audience adulation in Vienna as Calaf in Turandot and as Bacchus in the Strauss opera, Ariadne auf Naxus and todate remains the only Filipino tenor who has sung the Verdi opera, Otello.
Another Filipino opera singer from Morong, Rizal, Arthur Espiritu, made history by becoming the first Filipino tenor to make it at La Scala di Milan (the Mandalay Stadium of opera) in 2007. Some 67 years ago, a Filipino baritone by the name of Jose Mosessgeld Santiago Font made the same conquest in La Scala in the year 1932.
Recently, Lea Salonga was again the toast of England and the millions of tv viewers as she sang in the 25th anniversary concert of Les Miserables in London where she was the first Filipina to sing the lead part of that musical. She is the first Filipina actor to receive both the Olivier and Tony Awards in theater.
Of late, a 46-year old ballerina in the person of Lisa Macuja Elizalde got steady and consistent acclaim for her roles in Giselle, Don Quijote and lately, Le Corsaire. She happens to be the first and last Filipino soloist (in fact, the first foreigner) of Kirov Ballet where the imminent Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova came from.
After her triumphs in several continents, Cecile Licad again made waves in Michigan and Germany with her Chopin No. 1. Now headed for Russia where she will become the first Filipino soloist of the Russian State Orchestra, Licad is also the first Filipino to get the Leventritt Gold Medal in New York (the same medal that went to Van Cliburn and Gary Graffman) and was adjudged by a New York Times critic Harris Goldsmith as a new member of the league of the world’s greatest pianists.
For their own brand of heroism, these artists deserve more than token notice from the government. They will never enjoy a pay-per view income, only a few can buy several luxury cars and mansions and their highly acclaimed performances will not get congressmen booking flights abroad for their performances.
Which bring us to reflect on the plight of artists with no millions in pre-performance contracts. They have had to make do with modest fees compared to million of dollars of world boxing champs.
Once again, let’s cheer Manny Pacquiao for the nth time for the extraordinary brain and brawn he has shown in this Sunday's fight.
But for once, we should also remember that the world also needs heroes and heroines who can replenish and warm the heart and spirit of people in these difficult and uncertain times.
In this aspect, a Cecile Licad, an Otoniel Gonzaga, a Lea Salonga and a Lisa Macuja have done more than enough to make our country more proud. They will win hearts and minds and they will prove they can make a difference -- not by beating an international foe to a bloody pulp -- but in showing the nobility of the human spirit through the language of music, theater and dance.
They didn't do it because it's trabaho lang.
They did it for art, love and life and with no hope of a state motorcade and prospects for product endorsements.
Pacquiao's image from cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/ima
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