Rice got a nice, mostly polite reception, but after intermission, the star power intensified exponentially with the arrival of Aretha Franklin. Listeners roared, and she gave them what they came for – "Respect," "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," "Think," and more. "What a wonderful audience," she said.
A gala fund-raiser for the Mann's educational programs and clearly the Fairmount Park venue's main event of the summer, the concert has no obvious parallels. It was a first, and so far only, commingling for this pop music legend, former member of a presidential cabinet, and major symphony orchestra. Under-cover seating was sold out, and the lawn was thickly settled. Total attendance was near 10,000, a Mann official estimated.
The Philadelphia Orchestra has plenty of precedent ceding the guest-artist spotlight to personalities more famous for doing something else, among them Harpo Marx, Danny Kaye and, more recently, Alec Baldwin. Amateur Bavarian pianist Joseph Alois Ratzinger, now known as Pope Benedict XVI, is a friend of former Philadelphia Orchestra music director Wolfgang Sawallisch, though the relationship has yet to yield a performance with the Philadelphians.
Even Ignacy Jan Paderewski isn't an exact historical relation to Rice. He was first a professional pianist with a top-rank career, one of the greats, and then went on to become a diplomat, prime minister of Poland, and his country's signatory to the Treaty of Versailles.
