Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Aretha Franklin Discovers Opera American Idol at Lunch

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Aretha Franklin is in New York on her annual holiday. And on Tuesday she got serenaded at lunch.

The Queen of Soul stopped in to Brasserie Ruhlmann in Rockefeller Center with friends for lunch and got a surprise.

“I had a wonderful waiter,” she told me. “He said, You know, I sing the same songs you do.” He didn’t mean “Respect” but Puccini’s “Nessum Dorma.”

“I told him to show me, but sing low. Instead he really opened up. And he’s very talented. You should get over there immediately.”

The waiter in question was Don Catrone. Here he is singing “Nessum Dorma” on YouTube:

The folks at Brasserie Ruhlmann are thrilled. “Everyone clapped,” the manager told me. “And she was very nice. That’s what made it special.”

And Aretha? Still tweaking her new album, looking forward to a release soon.

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Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009 and previously edited Fame magazine and wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. is articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

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