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Tag: star spangled banner

  • Renée Fleming Delivers National Anthem At Super Bowl XLVIII

    This past Sunday’s Super Bowl (XLVIII) was one to remember with various highlights and lows that happened throughout the whole duration. With many so concentrated on the different teams’ performances, along with the commercials, the music of the Super Bowl helps create the explosive atmosphere of this once-a-year event. The American National Anthem is also one of the pieces performed during the Super Bowl that helps set the tone for the whole event, and this year, it was performed by well-known opera singer Renée Fleming.

    Fleming is an American classical soprano singer who has been performing since the 1980s during her graduate studies at Julliard, and she currently serves as the Creative Consultant for the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Her musical concentration consists of: Mozart, Richard Strauss, Handel, and other classical opera composers. Fleming has also been the recipient of various prestigious musical awards, such as: the Richard Tucker Award, the National Medal of Arts, and the Swedish Polar Music Prize.

    Fleming has also recently become visible in the media with various performances at media-attended events, such as: her performance of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” at We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial back in 2009, along with an appearance on The Dave Letterman Show in 2013, where she sang The Top 10 Opera Lyrics.

    On Sunday, February 2nd, 2013, Fleming gracefully performed the American National Anthem “The Star-Spangled Banner” (assisted by the Armed Forces Color Guard) at the 48th Super Bowl at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7etXoNrwP8c

    Prior to the game, Fleming announced via Twitter that she would be performing the National Anthem and invited viewers to tune in for her performance.

    According to The New York Times, Fleming was the first opera singer to perform the National Anthem at the Super Bowl. This makes a milestone for both the Super Bowl’s history, as well as how far opera music has come.

    A day later, Fleming tweeted a picture of her and Queen Latifah, who had earlier performed “America The Beautiful.”

    Various celebrities who watched the Super Bowl tweeted their appreciation for Fleming’s outstanding performance.

    Image via YouTube (0:53)

  • Star-Spangled Banner To Be Displayed At Smithsonian

    The Smithsonian in Washington D.C. is doing something that is believed to have never been done before – showcase the original, handwritten manuscript of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the flag that inspired the lyrics.

    These pieces of history have been displayed separately for many years. The flag has been housed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History since the early 1900s, while the original, handwritten manuscript has been in Baltimore at the Maryland Historical Society.

    Showcasing the two side-by-side is in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the song being written. According to Jennifer Jones, the curator who oversees the flag, seeing the two historic items together should create an “aha moment.” Jones added, “It’s meant to be emotional. It’s meant to be reflective.”

    At age 35, Francis Scott Key wrote the historic song on September 14, 1814. At the time, Key was a lawyer and amateur poet who witnessed the War of 1812 and the British forces attacking Baltimore’s Fort McHenry for more than a day. When the attack was over, Key saw the fort’s flag flying, signifying that the U.S. troops endured the attack. This inspired Key to write a poem originally titled “Defense of Fort McHenry.” The poem eventually had a title change, was set to music, and became the national anthem of America in 1931.

    The quill and ink-written original manuscript may have some surprises for visitors. Though the first stanza is all that is traditionally sung, Key actually has four stanzas in his original poem. Also, in the line “Oh say can you see through the dawn’s early light,” Key has crossed out “through” and replaced it with “by.”

    The flag was given to the Smithsonian by the family of Major George Armistead, the commander of Fort McHenry. Armistead was also the man who commissioned the flag with 15 stars and 15 stripes to represent the number of states in the Union at the time.

    The historic flag has been in Washington ever since, except for a short period of time during World War II when it was in Virginia for safekeeping.

    Key’s manuscript of “The Star-Spangled Banner” was purchased in the 1950s by the historical society. Since then it has been on display in Annapolis, Fort McHenry, and Mount Olivet Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland, where Key is buried.

    President of the Maryland Historical Society, Burt Kummerow, says people should go see the exhibit soon because, “It isn’t going to happen again anytime soon.”

    For those interested in seeing the two pieces of history side-by-side, you can visit the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. from Flag Day, June 14, through July 6. So get your summer vacation plans ready.

    Image via YouTube.

  • Here’s Metallica Performing The Star-Spangled Banner

    Metallica frontman/guitarist James Hetfield and guitarist Kirk Hammett played “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Giants/Dodgers game a few days ago, in a segment that in some ways felt like it could have been the intro to a Metallica album of yesteryear (think “Fight Fire With Fire,” “Battery,” or “Blackened”).

    Unfortunately, what followed was just a baseball game and not five minutes of heavy metal thunder. Still worth a watch.

    Note, both Metallica members are wearing Giants jerseys, and have Giants logos on their guitars, as the band is from San Francisco.

    The Giants won the game 4-3.

    Oh, and here’s Lars throwing out the first pitch:

  • Alicia Keys’ Anthem: Twitter Reacts

    Alicia Keys’ Anthem: Twitter Reacts

    With all the talk of public performances of “The Star Spangled Banner” lately, one would expect Alicia Keys to be a little nervous about performing the song–and an updated version of it, at that–at the Super Bowl.

    “I’m really excited about it, I can’t even lie,” Keys said last week. “I have to rehearse it totally, as if it’s a brand-new song, because it is actually a brand new song in the style that I’ll deliver it. I’m actually rehearsing it like a maniac.”

    Keys wowed the audience with a somewhat slowed-down version of the Anthem on piano; the rendition was highlighted with photos and video footage of soldiers serving time overseas, which got massive applause. And while the crowd appreciated the performance, Twitter seemed torn.

    Obviously, most of the complaints have to do with the length of the song, but that probably has more to do with the fact that the Super Bowl was agonizingly close to starting, and fans didn’t want to sit through too many more performances (Keys’ set came after Jennifer Hudson and the Sandy Hook Elementary chorus taking on a sweet and heart-breaking rendition of “America The Beautiful”). Check out the performance below.