The reason the Denver concert with opera singers worked was the same reason the Dionne Warwick concert with opera singers worked--because Denver and Warwick can belt out a song and they don't need the mic 1/4 inch from their mouths. If you look at the careful design of the stage for the concerts, you'll see that Domingo's microphone is two or three feet in front of him, because he needs to wind up to sing and it takes that much distance to account for what would otherwise be too much volume and distortion. Warwick and Denver, as I recall, had their mics at a respectable 12 inches or so from their faces. In the Diana Ross-meets-the-Opera Singers concert I saw (I don't remember what it was actually called, or the date), the poor little thing had her mic right on her mouth to catch every breathy little sound she made. She's a product of MoTown, her training (does she have any?) is completely different. While she has some great catchy music, she's pure electronic amplification. (Thread drift here, but it helps to make my point).

If any of them had been singing on a concert stage, with an audience, I'm sure things would have been a lot different mic-wise. But they were singing in a cathedral without the people, and were set to capture the accoustics as well as the voices. (That's my take on it, anyway).

Denver and Domingo recorded "Almost Love" (I think was the name) together and no doubt both used the song on their respective current albums. It didn't hurt either to reach audiences through the cross-over.

SRS