Clutching at straws, Gramophone magazine launches a chart that segregates people who actually sell records, like Katherine Jenkins, from other artists. Just to remind actual opera singers that by selling 35 CDs a week, you can get in the TOP CHART too!
(Opera Chic is launching a new classical music chart, too. Eligible artists: Hans Werner Henze and no one else. Let's see if he doesn't finally get a number one jam like that!).
Anyway, BBC story via Jessica:
"Albums like Katherine Jenkins' Sacred Arias would qualify for the combined chart but not the new specialist chart because of its combined repertoire.
The album features works like Andrew Lloyd Webber's Pie Jesu and Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah alongside Panis Angelicus, by 19th Century Belgian composer Cesar Franck".
For once, we root for La Jenkins: let her (and the bewbs) in! The three of them! Now!
The solution to the obvious popularity gap between classical music and what normal people actually listen to? Lowering the bar in some magazine chart!