Those historic, professional house debuts -- Juan Diego Flórez's 1996 Pesaro Matilde di Shabran; Bryn Terfel's 1989 Welsh National Opera Cosi fan Tutte; Renée Fleming's 1986 Salzburger Landestheater Die Entführung --but none were as cool as Carl Reiner's 2013 Pagliacci on Conan.
Last week, the 91-year-old comedian/producer/writer stopped by Conan and said that he had always wanted to be an opera singer, but never had the chance.
Carl Reiner: When I was a kid, my father had these red seal records, all of the great singers and I wanted to be an opera singer. I had a voice, when I got older, I had a good octave, a full octave range. I was missing two things to be an opera singer: pitch and timing. I never became one.
Embedding disabled, click here for the video. We're guessing that Enrico Caruso and Mario Lanza were the golden voices behind Reiner's Leoncavallo imprints as he debuted an excerpt of 'Vesti la giubba' to a full house.
The only way it could have been better was if Reiner's BFF Mel Brooks joined in a duet. (If you happen to have missed the boys' appearance on Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, it's probably the most touching view of enduring male friendship since Pressburger/Powell Colonel Blimp.)
