Elixir of Love

“Una furtiva lagrima” from Donizetti’s opera L’Elisir D’Amore (“A furtive tear” from Elixir of Love) was the first aria I ever learned. It has somehow fit me like a glove, and I’m not sure why.
It’s also one of the most beautiful arias written for a tenor.
I recorded it as the other aria for [...]

Simon Cowell’s Ego Check

Simon Cowell, the famous judge from American Idol, is a car racing enthusiast. So, when 60 Minutes profiled him for tonight’s broadcast, and for our Yahoo! News 60 Minutes feature, they took him car racing, and then had three car racing legends critique him in much the same way Simon Cowell critiques hopefulls on [...]

Afghanistan Then & Now

Today we launched my latest Yahoo! News interactive feature. It’s on Afghanistan – through the point of view of a journeyman who traveled through the country in 1973 and a civilian worker struggling to rebuild it today. It was fascinating to view the photos that these two people took 30 years apart. It’s amazing how [...]

New publicity photos

Being in front of a camera is a complete nightmare for me (this is why I work in radio and Internet journalism, and why I perform on stage). A wonderful young photographer named Lydia Lam, who’s a longtime friend of my sister, took these latest photos of me – since the last headshots I had [...]

Inkslinger’s Song

British composer Benjamin Britten’s first opera was “Paul Bunyan.” You can imagine what the story is. One of the characters in the opera is Johnny Inkslinger, and he gets a wonderful meditative aria to sing in the first act. This aria has been one of my favorites to perform, and has been a mainstay in [...]

Dissension in the Ranks

This week, we published a “60 Minutes” segment on active-duty soldiers who’ve served in Iraq, and are speaking out against the war.
The segment has generated heated debate among our readers, who’ve left impassioned comments on the “60 Minutes” site.
The main debate has been whether it’s proper for active-duty soldiers to speak out against [...]