Talent shows have their regular broadcast evenings. Friday night is for the big fishing net of Holland’s got talent. Whatever talent you think you have, get on stage, entertain us, and then we’ll see who we throw back, or who we give a brief moment of fame and then throw back. No, then Sunday evening. Then we look for talent for culture. Opera. Cabaret. This search is carried out with a slightly finer sieve on which ten candidates with the same talent are placed. In Aria is looking for opera singers, in I’m going to break to comedians.
Two talent shows on the same night, and yet they don’t look alike at all. If only because Aria just started the second episode and I’m going to break been working towards last night’s final for weeks. But there is more difference. Where the future comedians only had themselves, their voice, the floor and at most a guitar at their disposal, the Aria candidates pulled everything out of the wings. A forty-piece youth orchestra with conductor, sets, lighting, make-up, beautiful costumes and a room full of audience. I will.
Tenor Pim, in a bright blue suit, sang the Italian ‘Mamma’. No, not an aria, explained presenter Dionne Stax, but a tearjerker that requires operatic singing technique. Soprano Iryna, who fled from Ukraine, sang an aria La Boheme and said how happy she was in a “big show” to stand. Portuguese soprano Sylvia was so engrossed in her role of Tosca that she seemed to despair for a moment. The viewer had already seen that she was a cleaner during the day at holiday parks to pay for her dream. The jury (two opera singers and one professional enthusiast) judged meekly and matter-of-factly, packaging criticism as an exhortation, and in the end an unknown person decided. secret judge who had to leave and who stayed. The eventual winner wins a course at the Dutch National Opera.
Opera talents do not have to worry about material, most of the repertoire has been there for centuries. The comedians, on the other hand, had to sniff out every word, every sentence, every joke and then perform it cleverly in front of a three-member jury (one stand-up comedian, one comedian and one theater director). They received advice and criticism for weeks. No hunting, more joke density, less nerves. Guest lecturers instructed them to stay close to themselves, or to stretch the boundaries as far as possible. And through it all, presenter Stefano Keizer, himself a comedian, bounced from candidate to candidate to comfort them, encourage them or just give them a hug because he was getting too angry.
Losing just hurts
Set, lighting and audience were only there at the final, last night. The defenitive line up was not yet known. Of the four semi-finalists, one still had to drop out. That was Joel Gideon. So disappointed, angry, sad, or all three, that he strode off stage, out of the studio. Also nice sometimes. Normally you only see cheerful dropouts in talent shows. But sometimes losing just hurts. Three acts in the final. Maya van As and Brigitte van Bakel sang their cock song as Vlamousse. Farbod Moghaddam won the painful laugh with his amazement at paintball. “An armed conflict for fun”. Gavin Reijnders, who wanted to make his father proud and make everyone in the room laugh once at a joke, won. He gets a director to make a full evening performance.
The prize for encouragement goes from me to the jury. The laugh of Soundos El Ahmadi that boomed through the hall. The tranquility and ratio of Jörgen Tjon a Fong. And Thomas van Luyn, who in the final episode all three times swallowed his emotion because of what the candidates had made and that they had made it.