Long life | 24 November 2016

Do you remember Liberace? Yes, of course you do. Who could forget him? The Wisconsin-born son of a poor Italian immigrant, Liberace turned a natural talent for playing the piano into a vehicle for achieving celebrity and wealth. As a child, he was regarded as something of a musical prodigy, but he wasn’t tempted by success as a concert pianist. He sought and achieved stardom by transforming himself into a bizarre showman, extravagantly dressed in lace and velvet, bejewelled with enormous rings, playing an equally bejewelled grand piano with a candelabra placed on it, and engaging in constant joking banter with the audience.

He himself said, ‘I don’t give concerts, I put on a show,’ and most serious music critics took a dim view of these events. After one Liberace performance in the Carnegie Hall, a critic wrote, ‘It’s almost all showmanship topped by whipped cream and cherries,’ while another accused him of lacking respect for the great composers: ‘Liberace recreates — if that is the word — each composition in his own image.