Aretha Franklin wasn’t just a singer, she was a superhero. How else to explain how she swooped in and saved the 1998 Grammy Awards?
Twenty years ago at Radio City Music Hall, the Queen of Soul turned into the Queen of Opera when she came to the rescue of the show as a last-minute substitute for an ailing Luciano Pavarotti on the Puccini aria “Nessun dorma.” About 30 minutes into the Feb. 25, 1998, ceremony, the tenor, who was being honored as a Grammy Living Legend, called and told a production assistant that he was too sick to perform.
Franklin was already on hand to sing “Think” in a revival of the Blues Brothers with Dan Aykroyd, John Goodman and Jim Belushi (filling in for his late brother John). And when a pinch hitter was needed to fill a big hole in the lineup, Ken Ehrlich, the longtime producer of the Grammys, remembered that Franklin had sung “Nessun dorma” two nights earlier at the MusiCares event honoring her friend Pavarotti.
“And I just ran up to her dressing room, and asked her if she would do it,” Ehrlich told Billboard. “And she said she wanted to hear the dress rehearsal. In those days, we had a boombox with a cassette. And I brought it to her and played it for her. When she heard it, she said, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’ ”
And despite talk of Franklin doing her own classic “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” instead, “Nessun dorma” went on. The performance was scheduled to go on in the third hour of the show, just one award presentation after her Blues Brothers number. But Franklin was confident she could pull off what was an elaborate production with Pavarotti’s conductor, orchestra and choir.
Despite the fact that “Nessun dorma” is written for an operatic tenor and not a soulful mezzo-soprano, as Franklin was, she nailed the performance, hitting the high B at the climax and bringing the audience — including an awestruck Celine Dion — to its feet.
“Aretha was absolutely a pro,” co-producer Tisha Fein told Billboard. “And some people didn’t know that wasn’t what we’d always planned! It was just a miracle, an absolute miracle.”
