He's so completely gorgeous! Plus the Scar voice!! And the accent. So so sexy!! I know it's crazy but I'm starting to have a huge crush on him even though I'm 17. Wish I was born during his early times.
I only recently realised his mistake at 1.33 , where he hesitates slightly. You can tell by his face that he has temporarily forgotten his lyrics and quickly replaced them with a line from later in the song. "Use proper English, you're regarded as a freak" ought to have been "One common language I'm afraid we'll never get" which would have rhymed with 'set'. This only increases my admiration for mr. Irons. It proves how he is also very capable of coming up with quick solutions. Very admirable.
I love this song; on the one hand he's really insightful and reflective about language's social power, but still manages to come to an equally snobbish conclusion; he correctly says that she's trapped in a lower social class than Pickering because of the way they speak rather than because of some sort of innate superiority in his blood, recognises that social standing is all a matter of perception in which language plays a large part, and describes the hierarchy of accents as outdated. However, his solution is to lament that everyone doesn't speak the "proper" way, instead of lamenting how stupid it is that people make such enormously prejudiced assumptions about others purely because of their accent. OK, analysis over, I love this version. Jeremy Irons is awesome!
Arguably Higgins is twice the snob of even the snobs he claims to despise, as he things himself innately superior to those uptight upper-crust members of Victorian society.
I'm equally surprised and delighted not to be bombarded by anti-English hatred when scrolling down these comments, all I see are those who cannot help but express their love for a beautiful language sung by a man with a beautiful voice. You make my heart sing!
@@Rikard_A , American English is pretty much the same as it was when we left the British Empire in the 18th century. It's British English that's changed because of its contact with neighboring countries that are nowhere near us.
A multi-talent so rare in British entertainment. I have the two Columbia recordings with Harrison as Higgins and the later Irons recording. Such pleasures - thank heavens for CDs!
I have very fond memories of this concert, having watched the LD (remember those?) day and night as a toddler and conducting along to Kire te Kanawa and Jeremy Irons.
Indeed he is, too bad some of his films get bad reviews, don't you people just see how difficult it was already for him to play those roles yet he still delivers a perfect performance!
Honestly, I prefer this version of Harrison's. Every production will be different, some will sing like here, or do it the way Harrison did it which was basically talk in pitch.
Did he flub a line? I thought the lyric goes, "...he makes some other Englishmen despise him, 'one common language I'm afraid we'll never get'...why can't the English learn to...set a good example.
@jonberger - Actually, having played the part myself, I can tell you that much of the music is deliberately written to straddle that line between singing and speaking. Irons chooses to sing a little more often than Harrison did - but it's still near-impossible to actually "sing" more than 60 or 70 percent of any of the Higgins songs, because of the way they're written. I think it has to do with the character being an orator, a speech-ifier, so he gets "patter" songs.
Not sure if anyone has noticed this, but Jeremy Irons sang the wrong line (starting at 1:35). He sang "Speak proper English, you're regarded as a freak"; he repeated this line again at the end (starting 2:19). In the movie, Rex Harrison sang the first line as "One common language I'm afraid you'll never get".
@GrayJayJumba This is an exellent example of RP indeed. Jeremy Irons has a very clean way of speaking, avoiding most regional accents. The English accents you might have previously heard will have been subject to vowel changes. That is why this particular example is much unlike the more regional English you might have heard before.
Though I'll agree, too, that the Rex Harrison style is so ingrained in our minds for this part, I'm not sure an audience would like someone trying to be too different. Much like in any amateur stage production of Wizard of Oz or It's a Wonderful Life, audiences tend to WANT to performers sing and speak at least somewhat like Judy Garland and Jimmy Stewart ...
If you look at a video of Rex Harrison performing this same piece (a little theatre history), you will see that Mr. Harrison speaks the lyrics for he tried & tried to sing to no avail during many rehearsals for the theatre role -- his co-star was none other than Julie Andrews. I don't think I would have the nerve to sing with her as my co-star. Audrey Hepburn starred in the movie role due to contract obligations which prevented her from the movie role.
@Bastarden I myself am a non-native speaker of British English, but I find that, actually, spoken British English is, in average, less easy to understand than American English. And CONTEMPORARY British English -oh God- is really challenging, with all its clippings and omitted sounds. Take "laboratory": the americans would say LAB-UR-UH-TAW-REE; but the British usually slur it into something like LAB-TREE.
@friendofthejawas This is a song from "My Fair Lady" a musical composed by Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner, with Mr. Irons performing the part of "Professor Henry Higgins". This was recorded at Henry Wood Hall, London, February & May, 1987 and was evidently a stage production in London through 1991. The ASIN number to obtain the complete recording session would be B000OT8XQA. Hope this helps.
