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A TikTok post from Babatunde Akinboboye
A TikTok post from Babatunde Akinboboye
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Magazine
Summer 2022
Article Published: 02 Aug 2022

Opera's TikTok Challenge

By Francesca Federico

One day in 2018, baritone Babatunde Akinboboye decided to post a video to Facebook, thinking his friends would find it funny. The two-minute, 30-second video showed Akinboboye singing “Largo al factotum” from The Barber of Seville while Kendrick Lamar’s hip-hop song “Humble” played underneath. The bouncing rhythms of the aria almost perfectly matched the rhythm of Lamar’s track, creating a clever interplay across genre, melody, and language.

This article was published in the Summer 2022 issue of Opera America Magazine.

Francesca Federico

Francesca Federico is a soprano, Fulbright scholar, and digital media manager for opera and arts organizations
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Audiences & Community People Audience Building Administrators Artists

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