I have spent more time than I ought to this week playing an extended game of What the Fuck Is That Song. This is because I got a bootleg recording of a recital by Sondra Radvanvosky, recorded back in 2004. There’s no indication of what’s on it, so I have 19 mystery tracks to identify. Some of them are easier than others – e.g. if it’s about fourteen minutes long and begins with “Ah, perfido!” it’s probably Beethoven’s aria of the same name because there are only so many things in the world that are fourteen minutes long and begin with “Ah, perfido!”
But in non “Ah, perfido!”-type situations, one is reduced to trying to catch the first line, googling the first line, and then either checking an aria or song database to match the text or finding clips of whatever it might be on YouTube and listening to see if they are the same. I have had more success with some tracks than others: it’s amazing how much more intelligible sung Italian is when you know the words already.
So I have developed a pincer strategy. One side of the pincer is the abovedescribed listening and googling; the other is finding reviews of Radvanovsky’s recitals that list the things that she commonly sings, and then seeing if those are the things that I am hearing on this particular recital. Maybe by the time I have made myself thoroughly sick of the recording, I will know what is on it.
The Earworm 
you could upload it somewhere, post it here and see if anyone knows what it is. I’m already on the edge of my seat!
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That’s a great idea! (Not that I would be much help, but I’d enjoy the dialog.) By the way, thanks for keeping up the profanity! 🙂
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That is a really good idea. I believe I will do this with the ones I’ve gotten complete stuck on. (I’ve also had a good suggestion to use Lexis-Nexis to find reviews of the specific concert, since it’s long enough ago that trying to google that particular concert doesn’t help much)
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How does Lexis-Nexis work?
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It’s a big database of newspapers, law reviews and a few other types of source going back a few decades; academic libraries (and some public ones, though I don’t know how many – I suspect it’s expensive) buy subscriptions, which is how I have access.
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aha, I see.
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Maybe some signposts?:
“As is to be expected, Prima Donna Radvanovsky’s recital program at the McCallum will be heavily weighted toward Verdi arias, but arias by Rossini and chanson by Duparc and Rachmaninoff round out the program. Don’t go looking for an evening of German lieder; that is not her forte. Pianist Anthony Manoli accompanies.”
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Yes – thanks! This looks about right. I have already detected some Verdi arias; things in French are going to be harder for me to catch the words.
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