Crossover fire.(Viewpoint)

Just what is crossover, anyway? If a singer "crosses over," in which direction is he or she supposed to be traveling? The crossover label evidently applies when a classical singer tries out material that is supposed to be more "popular" than his or her usual repertoire. What label, then, is to be used when an artist expert in pop music or jazz sings something classical? Is this performance to be called a "double-crossover"? Is the crossover trip supposed to be one-way, no return--i.e., once a crossover artist, always a crossover artist? Or is an artist's crossover status meant to he temporary, like insanity?

Crossover, in one form or another, has always been with us. When did it become a crime? Were the Three Tenors concerts of the 1990s so very different in spirit and in appeal from Jenny Lind's adventures with P. T. Barnum in 1850? Lind made her reputation in Europe, singing the music of Meyerbeer, Donizetti and Bellini--but her American audiences wanted the folk-flavored "The Echo Song" as well, and that's what Lind gave them. The "crossover" label was never stuck on Lind, nor were the artists who followed her in the next century burdened by the term, or by the artificial restrictions it implies. In the 1910s and '20s, John McCormack filled the biggest auditoriums in the U.S. with programs that mixed items by Handel, Lalo and Leoncavallo with sentimental Irish songs; to my ear, McCormack's artistry is no less thrilling in "The Star of the County Down" than in "Care Selve." Just is catholic were the accomplishments of the generation of classical singers who came of age in the great days of radio--with all due respect to Frank Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney, my favorite recording of "You Go to My ...