Exclusive: Arabs Got Talent winner Emanne Beasha talks puppies, playtime and Pavarotti

Lifestyle

Published: 2017-05-24 00:47

Last Updated: 2024-03-28 11:12


Emanne won the latest season of the popular talent show Arabs Got Talent.
Emanne won the latest season of the popular talent show Arabs Got Talent.

Today Jordan’s very own Emanne Beasha, the newly crowned winner of Arabs Got Talent’s, graciously took time from her five day-old victory lap to talk with Roya News.

At just eight-and-a-half, the opera-singing kid, whose father is Jordanian, oozes talent and personality and can charm you silly when you least expect it. Today, she is going about her usual business -- playful hand-clapping games with Mom and breaking into song and dance at every opportunity. Can she have a twix or a nut bar? She offers extra tid-bits on our questions, volunteering that she loves the word ‘banana’ but hates the taste, instantly recognising something British in her interviewer’s pronunciation of the fruit. One of her best friends is British, she tells.

Does Emanne come from a family of talents? She tells us her younger brother “is good at being funny,” so that makes at least two family entertainers, we suggest back at her. Meanwhile, her older brother is “good at sailing and engineering” but neither parent are particularly musical we are told– that’s Emanne’s thing. She was practically born singing, her American mother tells Roya.

On the prize money from Arab’s got talent, Emanne considers before thinking that she might ask her mom to save it for her and ultimately might splash out on a….. puppy. Probably not a German shepherd because they have big heads, she observes. Unlike our little starlet, who could be too big for her boots by now if she weren’t in good hands.

Who are her favorite singers, we ask? Emanne’s taste, we are reminded by her instant answer, is perhaps sophisticated by most 8 year-old standards, but she prefers the Italian classics Maria Callas, Luciano Pavarotti and Andrea Bocelli. As if to give us what we’re really after, she breaks into some Ed Sheeran - tossing out a casual pop-line just in case we didn't believe our Puccini-performing-prodigy – and remembers as an afterthought that she doesn’t mind modern-star Adele either. Much more at home singing operatic arias, she treats us to high-brow riffs and trills throughout the interview and finally a full on operatic spell to keep us quiet. It’s Puccini’s O Mio Babbino Caro, and some of us can’t hide our glistening cheeks by the time she’s spent.

Incredulous, we ask how many singing lessons the kid-wonder has had to give us this vocal virtuoso. Less than a ‘quarter of a hand’ she decides, dramatically singing her answer, borrowing that Sinatra line “too few to mention.”

With a Jordanian side, Emanne is quick to share what she loves most about Jordan. She’s mad about the “jenaric” those mini apple-looking green fruits -- ‘sour’ and often taken with salt. She gets to pick them herself from her grandmother’s tree when in Jordan. When she’s not singing, she’s playing tennis -- another childhood passion – or playing with her brothers as the middle kid. She’d like to be a vet or a tennis player when she grows up, she tells Roya. But there’s always opera-singing if all else fails.

Singing in the shower? Of course chimes in her mother, who obviously would know. Even her friends get an earful when showering communally at the swimming pool Emanne gushes, though the boys tease her, she states.

And with that our little guest must leave us: she’s stopping off at Teta’s (Grandma) house where she’s bound to pick those fun-sized fruits “high, high” from the trees. This is just a fly-by visit before she’s back to current home in Dubai to settle down after an exciting week!