23 May 1997
Here’s the first Irish number one we can attribute to German boxing. ‘Con te partirò’ had already been a solo hit across Europe for Andrea Bocelli. In November 1996 Henry Maske, a former Olympic champion boxer, was coming to the end of an illustrious pro career that had made him one of Germany’s most popular sports stars. His walk-on music was a Vangelis piece that had gone to number one in Germany as a result. So, for his final fight the record company commissioned this duet version as a promotional tie-in. When Maske lost the fight and said his farewells to his devoted fans, both in the stadium and among the 17 million TV viewership, ‘Time To Say Goodbye’ was played as he climbed out of the ring and left the arena. That moment was the clincher: the single was soon being bought by Germans in almost industrial quantities and eventually racked up 2.75 million sales, more than any native German single ever.
Worldwide, you can add another 10 million to those sales figures, from buyers who neither know nor care about German boxing. So, what made ‘Time To Say Goodbye’ such a colossal global hit? Well, the title and the Henry Maske context tell one part of the story: it’s become a go-to soundtrack to funerals and other farewells, helped by being such a lachrymose, elegiac track. The sporting angle is another clue: ‘Nessun Dorma’ and the Three Tenors for the 1990 World Cup had inadvertently created a market for light-entertainment opera arias, stirring without being religious, pitched at middlebrow audiences who wouldn’t consider themselves classical music listeners but who fancy its air of cultured respectability. ‘Time To Say Goodbye’ was catnip to them. Bocelli and Brightman each further ploughed this furrow with great reward, and subsequent years will see the formula boiled down to saccharine mush like Il Divo, Josh Groban and Sky Arts’s Andre Rieu.
My opera knowledge is just of the big beasts such as Carmen, but it’s like Shakespeare: you know more of it than you realise, and if you give it a go you’ll be surprised by how much you enjoy it. Of course, you don’t need to listen to actual opera to disparage the maudlin manipulations of ‘Time To Say Goodbye’, but it’s a bonus. And 1997 hasn’t yet finished with funereal hits, not by a long chalk.
