Video: Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé performing the legendary duet from their album ‘Barcelona’ (1988). The open air performance took place on October 8, 1988 at the La Nit Festival, that was held to celebrate the arrival of the Olympic Flag from Seoul; that city hosted the Summer Olympics then, followed by Barcelona in 1992. On the piano Mike Moran.
Readers of this blog might rightly question the relevance of writing about Barcelona at a time when my home city Vienna co-hosts one of the world’s biggest sport events. But today I had to put a hold on my writing about scenes from the EURO 2008 Football Championship. When I returned home from work today early evening I found in the post long-awaited the album ‘Barcelona’. It is not the original release but the reprint of 1992, but in the original wrapping. I slowly opened this treasure – I had to look for it for a bit on the Internet, but finally found it in the ebay shop dvd-price for a reasonable price.
So, today was the big day: For the first time I shall be listening to what fans of Queen legend Freddie Mercury, as well as one of Barcelona’s most famous and loved ‘musical daughters’, Montserrat Caballé have produced. Of course, quite a few of the songs and duets can be found on YouTube, and in the meantime I had already purchased the excellent DVD documentary Freddie Mercury: The Untold Story (2000), produced by the Austrian Director Rudi Dolezal. So, Austria at times evidently plays an important role in the transmission of rock and pop music.
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