Soundtrack to My Life

Featuring classic moments in the careers of twelve legends of Opera, from Luciano Pavarotti to Enrico Caruso, Joan Sutherland to Kiri Te Kanawa and Jessye Norman to Mario Lanza. Filmed in in the United Kingdom and Italy, each episode features historical archive, performance highlights, and contributions from artists, critics and directors.

The AIDS charity concert staged by the surviving members of Queen on April 20, 1992, at Wembley Stadium was an appropriate send-off for the band's late lead singer, Freddie Mercury, who had succumbed to the disease five months earlier. The flamboyant Mercury was always in his element before gigantic crowds like the one that filled Wembley one last time, and his stand-ins for the occasion - Gary Cherone (then of Extreme), Roger Daltrey, Joe Elliott (Def Leppard), James Hetfield (Metallica), Elton John, Annie Lennox, George Michael, Liza Minnelli, Robert Plant, Axl Rose (Guns N' Roses), Seal, Lisa Stansfield, Paul Young, and Zucchero - were artists who both knew how to work such audiences and also had at least some of his flair for performing. Some, indeed, went too far, with Cherone, for example, turning in a hyperactive display during "Hammer to Fall." All brought their personal styles and interpretations, sometimes to telling effect.

After centuries of percolating in the American south, what was first called 'hillbilly music' begins reaching more people through new technologies of phonographs and radio. The Carter Family, with their ballads and old hymns, and Jimmie Rodgers, with his combination of blues and yodelling, became its first big stars.