Mezzos Galore ! Massenet Cendrillon Royal Opera House

How I wish I hadn't been so busy in the last few weeks as I had to cancel almost a dozen committments and return my precious ticket to Cendrillon at the Royal Opera House ! It could just have been the magic I needed. Please read Ruth Elleson's review of Massenet Cendrillon in Opera Today. Mezzos galore ! Ruth's a singer,too, so she knows from inside.  This is good, well informed writing. Wish there was more like that.

Opera is like a candle - Zhengzhong Zhou

Opera would wither and die if it weren't for young artists. Every big name.was once young and aspiring. And as older artists retire, new ones emerge. There never was a mythical Golden Age where everyone was fully formed.  Be glad that the Jette Parker Young Artist Programme at the Royal Opera House is one of the finest schemes through which young professionals can develop. Performance is an absolutely integral part of the programme: that's how young artists learn their trade and how older artists pass on what they know. Like a candle, opera needs nurturing.
 

On Sunday 17th July, this year's Young Artists are holding their summer show on the theme Venice -its history, mystery and glamour.The first part of the programme is built around lesser-known Rossini, and the second part around Donizetti, Offenbach and Britten. The show is devised by the young artists themselves, who include stage directors and conductors.

Zhengzhong Zhou is singing. Does the name ring a bell? He's in the current Madama Butterfly at Covent Garden, the one which has audiences buzzing because it's so fresh and vivacious and the singing is so good.  Zhou sings Yamadori. It's not a huge part but it's significant. Often Yamadoris are played like villains because they're rich and powerful, ergo, "bad", but the evidence in the score suggests otherwise. Zhou made Yamadori sympathetic. Yet he's only 27 years old. How does a singer develop the artistic imagination? Every person in thius world is unique and has something to offer. Interesting people can make interesting art.

Please read more in Opera Today. For Zhou, music is a powerful emotional force. The Jette Parker Young Artists Programme channels those with proven potential. It's a gracious act of giving. Nurture the young today, and they enrich the art of the future.

Rossini - William Tell full download !

"William Tell, William Tell, gone from the land he loved so well, William Tell, William Tell, William TELL ! of Switzerland"." The first opera chorus most people have sung, even if they think it's the Lone Ranger. Aged 2, I got bit by a dog, for climbing on its back and pulling up his collar, shouting "Hi ho Silver !" Can't blame the dog. The things one does for art.

There's a lot more to William Tell than the Overture. It's relatively obscure Rossini so many people won't know it in its entirety. So to help prepare for Saturday's BBC Proms performance at the Royal Albert Hall (Pappano, Acadermy of Santa Cecilia Rome )  here is a complete download with libretto, http://www.operatoday.com/content/2009/05/rossini_gugliel.php  (alternate libretto link HERE) Guglielmo Tell, Rossini, live broadcast January 1954, RAI Rome. Pappano's very enthusiastic - read his interview with Ivan Hewett HERE

Eat your heart out, Murdoch - BBC Proms, July

Rupert Murdoch hates the BBC and wants curbs on its services. Well, if the free market was such a wonderful thing, why should he fear competition? The print media is dead. The real money lies in digital communications, so it's perfectly sensible to shaft trashy tabloids. They're more trouble than they're worth.  These days the world is controlled, almost invisibly, by digital networks and shadowy private organizatiuons that are above the law. So be very, very wary.

That's why I support the BBC Proms. Both the Proms and the BBC (once separate things) were created by idealists who believed in altruistic public service. They're not perfect, but consider the alternative. So come and enjoy the world's biggest street party even if you're thousands of miles from the Royal Albert Hall. You won't be alone, with milllions over the globe tuning in, online, live and on demand.

This year's First Night celebration should be a wow - Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek who has brought Czech music right to the fore in this country, and on its own pungent, idiomatic terms. This is Janáček’s Rite of Spring, a passionate invocation of an ancient spirit that's both Slavic and universal. It's savage, primitive and wildly uplifting. Extremely good singers who've worked lots with Bělohlávek. He's stepping down soon as Chief Conductor of the BBC SO, so make the most of hearing him live. Decades from  now, people will be remembering him like the other greats who've enhanced the Proms.

Saturday night's Big Gala is Rossini William Tell. All the stops are being pulled out for this because it's Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra and Chorus of the Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome, which he's led for several years. He's brought them to the Proms before, and if anything, his work with them is the best he's done. This should be spectacular. There's a recording in the offing, too.

Sunday is Havergal Brian's monster Gothic Symphony. Fifteen years ago, Brian's music was known more by reputation than actually by being heard. Now there's a website so comprehensive that anyone can be an instant expert. Brian has a cultish following, so his image has cachet. This Prom sold out within hours because the symphony is humungous and needs a setting like the Royal Albert Hall and the Proms to give it room.

Monday, Myung-Whun Chung conducts the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. Messiaen of course, Chung's speciality, but I'm listening for Pascal Dusapin, whose significance is much under-rated. Morning in Long Island is a big piece for piano and orchestra, and a BBC commission.  Another Dusapin premiere on 27 July, a concerto for string quartet and orchestra with the Arditti Quatet as "soloists".

Although I listen to most Proms, and write about some 40 or so each year, the next "big" prom for me is Verdi Requiem on Sunday 24th. Semyon Bychkov conducts, singers include Poplavskaya, Calleja, Furlanetto and Pentcheva.

All this funded thru BBC Licence fees which aren't compulsory if you don't listen or watch TV, digital or otherwise (some people don't).  Eat your heart out, Rupert Murdoch.

Meistersinger at the Movies - the implications of filmed opera

The Glyndebourne Festival's Wagner Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg reached a world audience within weeks of its live premiere. (read review HERE) Consider the significance. Millions more will have seen this Meistersinger online and in cinemas than will ever see the production live, no matter how manyb times it repeats. What does this imply for the future of opera and indeed of classical music?

Box office receipts don't cover costs, which is why there are so many revivals of safe bets in all houses.  Revivals, DVDs, films and online broadcasts are essential because they bring in extra revenue long after the initial outlay. Without follow-ons, most opera houses couldn't operate as businesses, far less create new work. So we can't complain.

A photograph freezes a moment in time (the term properly used here). A photograph isn't the same as real life experience, and can be completely misleading. (which is why opera photos are supposed to be used with written content). When you watch a film of an opera, you need to realize that you're watching it through a filter. Directors and cameramen decide which angles to shoot, what to emphasize and what to leave out. Sure, you get better close-ups than you'd ever get live, but it's not at all. the same thing.

The filmed Meistersinger worked better than live because the camera was able to omit the oppressive fan-vaulted ceiling which hung over every scene live. Everyone who heard the film thought Gerald Finley sang brilliantly and with real force. Most of those who heard him live thought quite the opposite. In fact, I'd venture that the otherwise pointless updating of period was done in order to complement Finley's voice.He's more convincing as Romantic Poet than as Sachs the earthy, non-conformist cobbler. On film, something's been done to the sound dynamics, so Finley's performance is transformed. As an artistic choice, it's valid because it's a far better experience for the audience.

Every performance is always going to be different. There's an art to assessing singers that's lost these days when we're conditioned to judging things on the basis of performance frozen in time.  In reality, things change depending on many factors. What you hear on recording isn't necessarily true. Decades ago, Albert Remedios sang a concert when he really should have been home in bed. It saved the show but fixed his image in the popular mind to his detriment. Unfortunately some audiences think singers should be gladiators, sacrificed for audience pleasure.So listen to films - and recordings - never forgetting they're just snapshots, not the whole experience.

Walther's song was tentaive to start with, but Sachs was wise enough to see the potential in his abilities and gave him a chance. On the film, Marco Jentszch's Walther was clearly nervous, saving himself for the final Prize Song. In live performance, he was much more natural, so you could hear how interesting his voice really is, and where it might head if he's well nurtured. But you wouldn't know from the film. When assessing singers, don't be a Beckmesser, but a Sachs.

Once, people learned their music from studying scores and playing transcriptions to sing at home. That's why I posted the French In fernem Land HERE. Anyone could play that piano part: the purpose of the exercise was to listen, not to show off.  Recordings changed all that. Nowadays we're conditioned to think in  finite terms, as if a performance were a stand-alone object to be consumed. Beware "comparative recording surveys". Done well, they're useful but you can't ever judge anything by picking out the good bits.

Much (but not nearly enough) has been written about the way the internet is changing the very way we think. We think in twitter sized blips and assume the instant fix of Google is the same as reality. If we get used  to processing input in ever more superficial ways will our brains shrivel? and if not our brains. our psyche? Art challenges sound bite mindsets. What its role in society? Has it been a way to stimulate the mind and open us to new perspectives? Is creative art necessary to human evolution? Just as there are many who would deny evolution, there are probably many who'd deny the role of creative imagination.

But as always, I digress. Evolution conditions us to process visual clues more strongly than sound, unless we're blind. Thus film has the power to fix things in our minds even more than recordings. All the more, we need to be aware of the danger of forgetting that there are many different ways to think, feel and learn.  Film is a wonderfully effective way of reaching out to people, but we do need to think about its longerterm implications. Who does it reach? What does it teach? (Please also see my earlier post on how film changes opera, and other related posts on music on film)

Aux bords lointains

Kaufmann Kampe Fidelio live from Munich

Last week I posted a link to the Bayerische Staatsoper Beethoven Fidelio.  (Use this link for photos). Jonas Kaufmann, of course, plus an eyeful/earful of him at the interval. No need for costume and makeup when you're playing a decrepit prisoner?  Very good singing - Anja Kampe, Franz-Josef Selig (Rocco), Wolfgang Koch (Don Pizarro), Steven Humes (Don Fernando), Laura Tatulescu and Jussi Myllys. I liked Kampe's solid, resourceful Leonore - the woman is no wimp. Nice firm intonation, purposeful. Shame she had to go put on a dress and go back to being a Hausfrau.

Musically I think I prefer Stemme, Kaufmann and Abbado at Lucerne, but this Munich version is outstanding because of the production. How would you create the image of an infernal prison where the inmates are dehumanized? Calixto Bieito and designer Rebecca Ringst create a maze-like structure like the circuitry of an infernal machine. A prison for the internet age. We're all trapped in this system. Look at the photos - lights as bright as interrogation chambers, lights that flicker across the structure like mindless drills. As soon as you get your head round the configuratiuon, the maze alters shape and you're thrown off again. Yet the set doesn't intrude. The principals sing in front of it for the most part, starkly defined. Could Beethoven have imagined this? He wasn't into theatrical action so much as symphony with narrative and singing. And it's quite possible that he would have got the concept of suppression and the abuse of power in a wider cosmic sense.

In this staging, the orchestral passages come totally into their own. The prisoners slowly crawl out from inside the maze, having been hitherto invisible. When Leonore and Rocco descend into the darkest deepest dungeon, the overture becomes terrifyingly gri : aerial artists are seen descending through the structure, tied precariously to guy wires. It feels dangerous : but then that's what the journey means.

Later when Leonore and Florestan are reunited, they switch back to street clothes, their dignity restored. What to do with the long orchestral interlude? Florestan and Leonore look upwards and listen, their minds presumably fixed on abstract, noble ideals. And so we listen, too, for this music expresses more than words or scenery. Suspended above the maze are cells - not prison cells but small spaces where musicians are playing. Conceptually brilliant. Through music and spiritual integrity, we might all break out.

This time the prisoners emerge, some with blank placards where presumably their identities should be. Then the masterstroke - Don Fernando. The character is so unreal, it's ludicrous. As if the injustice of centuries can be overturned by simple fiat? We don't know who Don Fernando really is or why he's really popping up, except to end the story. Bieito instead expands the role. This version is a crazed clown, white face and smeared red lipstick, who appears from on high, in a box abouve the stage. A God or a Devil? He does and sings the right things, but we're left wondering, is it all a nefarious ruse? Thought provoking and unsettling. If you want joke Fidelio, there's alway the moronic Jurgen Flimm production (see Literalism Murders Truth). In Bieito's Munich production, Florestan and Leonore triumph because they have vision. Flimm's production is not only the denial of vision, but of basic imagination.

Josef Suk died yesterday

Josef Suk died yesterday after a long illness. Please read the full story here in České Noviny. The news is more than "just" the death of a great violinist but also of a lineage. Suk's grandfather was Josef Suk the composer and his great grandfather was Antonin Dvořák.  Please read my post on Dvořák, Josef Suk the eldest, and his Asrael Symphony. At left there's a photo of Ottilka Dvořák holding her baby son, father of the late violinist. It was taken in 1901. A few years later Ottilka was dead, but Josef Suk, the violinist, was born in 1929, and was old enough to remember his grandfather, who died in 1935.  Maybe Suk has musical descendants, but it doesn't matter: all of us have learned from the "family". I heard Suk live only once when I was too young to appreciate. But here is a clip which now seems quite poignant. And here is a link to Martin Anderson's obituary. Martin always writes beautifully, and knowledgeably, but this is truly personal.  The thing with obits is that they're written long before the event, so have a nice elegaic quality about them which is way beyond "ordinary" journalism. (PS I am writing MORE about Vitezslava Kaprálová songs in the next few days. Please come back)LOTS on this site about Czech music and film

Siegfried, Paris broadcast online

Online now, full broadcast of Wagner Siegfried, from Paris. Follow this link. Phillipe Jordan conducts. Torsten Kerl, Juha Uusitalo (pretty good) and the outrageous Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke. 

Growing up with Bruce Lee

Once I could impress punk kids by saying I knew Bruce Lee. Well, sort of, and in any case better than they did. Although I passed his house often, the closest I actually got (ten feet) was being on a ferry with him. He strode on board and sat like he owned it. Everyone else melted into the background so he could have his privacy.

Everyone knew Bruce Lee because he was an extremely famous child actor. We all grew up with his movies, so he wasn't at all unknown when he came back to Hong Kong flush with success on US TV. His Dad was a star, so he was totally part of the Cantonese movie tradition. Instead he created a whole new ethos, single handed. What was so shockingly innovative about him was that he was one of the first guys who confronted western supremacy and won. Unless you have lived in a colonial environment you have no idea how racism corrodes. People avoid it by not engaging. Bruce Lee confronted it and beat it. There were hundreds of kung fu movies before him, usually about "defeating the Qing, restoring the Ming" ie traditional Shaolin context. Then along comes Bruce Lee and it's modern, political and turns the genre on its head. Bruce Lee  beats white guys, black guys, Japanese, mobsters, etc.  "Fists of Fury" was a cultural watershed. Nowadays underdogs everywhere identifiy with Bruce Lee because he represents the hope that anyone can beat the odds. Bruce Lee has changed the world.There is a lot more to Bruce Lee than kungfu.

Here he is with Yip Man, his kung fu master. It's quite an unusual photo as most kung fu acolytes are humble, because the "way" is to win by purity and not ego. It's as spiritual as physical. And there's Bruce, muscle bound and strikingly western-looking. No wonder Yip Man is bemused. When Bruce Lee died, the city was stunned into silence, and then mass hysteria. Thousands turned out for the procession. The sight of Lee's white wife and kids in traditional Chinese mourning garb was sensational. Hard to explain the significance but she was making a statement, and it earned her enormous respect.

There is a movie where Bruce Lee aged 15 plays an uncontrollable rock'n'roll brat who is tamed by a scholarly teacher played by Yam Kim Fai, the opera singer,  as usual in drag. Above is a still from the movie.早知當初我唔嫁 "If I had known about marriage" 1956.  "Do you hit kids?" he asks Yam Kim Fai. "It's uncouth" she says.  Yam Kim Fai and Fong Yim Fun, two of the biggest Cantonese opera singers ever, sing a duet based on the tune known in the west as "with a knapsack on my back".Yam and Fong (Bruce's stepmother) fall in love, but she's pushed into marrying a straight guy instead. But all's well and ends well. Fong becomes a nun!

Massenet Cendrillon - full download

Massenet's Cendrillon at the Royal Opera House with Joyce DiDonato in the lead sounds like a lot of fun! Cannot miss, with her singing in a bright, breezy production. The photo shows the fairies in the 1899 premiere. Leaden stage but look at their wings! Can they "fly"? Maybe those girdles are turbo charged. Seated is Julia Guiraudon the first ever Massenet Cendrillon.

HERE is a full download of a live performance on Christmas Day, 1943 in occupied Paris. Sound quality is quaint, but it is an interesting historic performance. Listen specially for Jean Guilhem who sings Le Prince Charmante. The role was originally written for a Falcon, a voice type almost unique to French repertoire - darker than soprano, but brighter than many mezzos. Guilhem is interesting as he's a very high tenor, ranging towards countertenor. True falcons must be pretty rare and most audiences wouldn't relate to a male soprano.  At the Royal Opera House, the part is taken by Alice Coote. So everyone's happy!

Turnage Greek - back with a vengeance

Mark Anthony Turnage's Greek hits the streets again. Thursday it's at the Cheltenham Festival as part of a tour. It's Turnage's first opera, written at the age of 28 when he was mean, lean and thornily edgy (and maybe still is). Good pedigree - it was commissioned by Hans Werner Henze, no less, for the Munich Bienniale. Henze taught Turnage briefly so knew what he was letting himself in for. Greek, in typical punchy Turnage mode, is based on the Stephen Berkoff hit play Oedipus the King, itself based on Greek legend.

This will be worth catching as it's produced by Music Theatre Wales. They're an innovative company, who achieve great results. Remember their In the Penal Colony (Philip Glass), at the Linbury Theatre, ROH,  last year ? (review HERE). Music, subject and staging drilled precisely  together, so painful it was almost impossible to watch. Which is what Kafka intended. Turnage, on the other hand, can be surprisingly lyrical sometimes, so don't be put off by image.

Greek was shocking in 1988/9 because it was a primal scream of protest. Those were the last, anguished years of Thatcherite Britain. The Oedipus story was a frame for rebellion. It wasn't coincidence that Thatcher's sex caused more resentment than any male politican might get. There have been far more unethical politicans since, but protest was/is curiously mute. Anyway, Greek is set in the urban jungle of East End London. Tough Eddy kills a man, marries his wife and takes over the pub (kingdom). Years later Eddy discovers that Wife is his long lost mother....  maybe 80's misogyny has deep roots.

HERE is a link to Music Theatre Wales's website where there a video about the production and lots more detail. "Turnage had no qualms in tearing up the rule book and producing a ground-breaking contemporary classic: an opera fizzing with high voltage energy and raw emotion."  If ENO really wanted to be radical, they'd could do worse than revive early Turnage.

How I'd stage Handel Rinaldo

At Glyndebourne, Handel Rinaldo is being staged as schoolboy fantasy, though it's been decades since Classics were taught in schools. Review to come, but in the meantime, I thought, what else could be done with Rinaldo? It's a glorious riot of an opera. Baroque is meant to stun an audience with its audacity. The crazier the plot, the wilder the inventiveness in setting.

What a plot! Crusaders and Saracens, Witchcraft and Intoxication. The Good Guys don't do sex, the Bad Guys do, and use it to unman our chaste upright heroes. What's nice, upstanding Christian to do? Realism isn't relevant. Indeed, the whole idea of Crusades was fantasy, and an excuse for unemployed European knights scrapping over Jerusalem whuch isn't theirs in the first place. By the time TorquatoTasso got round to writing the epic poem from which numerous Rinaldo, Orlando and Armida fanstasies were born, the Crusades setting was a device to evoke an exotic, alien world where societal norms didn't apply. Escapist dreams, imagination running free. Perhaps that's why composers couldn't resist playing around with the same characters over and over.

Straging Handel Rinaldo is quite a challenge, since it'sstrong musically, though much of the drama comes from sudden scene changes - battlefield to mountainside, enchanted garden to deserted plain. You can imagine Handel's audience going "Ahhhh !" when some corny device like a painted backdriop shifts. or mechanical thunderrbolts appear. But that is part of the fun of baroque, where no-one expects literal realism.

Think about the music with its hyper colours and bravura elaboration. Exuberant music needs an exuberant setting. How you could contrast the Crusaders Tent City with Armida's magical kingdom! But that wouldn't be fair on Rinaldo and his male-bonded repressed mates. Doing Armida full-blast would wipe the floor with them. So there's a very strong case for channeling the energy in this opera on more stringent lines. The plot hinges on cosmic struggle. The baroque stage was stylized and non-realistic. Singers wore (relatively) normal clothes : if they'd followed the concepts of Classical Antiquity, they'd be semi-naked, Armida's assets fully displayed. So there's no reason why "modern" wouldn't work if the effect was to enhance the surreal implausibility of the plot. Anything but the hideous hybrid of the Met Armida where gauche, gurning nondancers flop about pretending to be giant cupids! OTOH maybe that was designed to make Renée Fleming even more doll-like in comparison.

So, no nudity, not for prudish reasions but because the singers are there to sing, extravagantly, and don't need anything stressful that distracts from what they're primarily there to do. So a simple, bright set that puts all the attention on the singing, with spectacular flashes of fantasy as punctuation, not for its own sake. What are the most fun bits in the opera? That's where the highlights go.

One interesting subtheme in the opera is the struggle between masculine values and non-masculine. In baroque times, the good guys were identified by their high squeaky voices. It's completely opposite to the concept we have today, where Men are Men, like in the movies. Modern audiences often can't get their heads around women or counter tenors singing butch roles. But building on that disjunct could add a piquant twist. Rinaldo is about a man played by a woman who's tempted by emasculating female demons, and has to be rescued by mates for whom there are no gender subtleties. The man Rinaldo played by a woman, chosen by Armida over the unequivocally masculine Argante. Did baroque audiences relish the irony? We can, today, so it wouldn't be inappropriate to work the idea into a staging.

Please read about the wonderful staging of Rossini Armida at Garsington in 2010
Now that's an intelligent, musically sensitive staging. Imagine it done with major singers that bigger houses could afford?

Madame Butterfly broadcast and real Japanese response

That excellent Puccini Madama Butterfly from the Royal Opera House is now available online, internationally and on demand on BBC Radio 3.  It's a must-listen because Kristine Opolais is singing - she's the sensation of the production! Liping Zhang will be on the film that's being made, so this is your chance to hear why most of us were stunned by Opolais. Read review HERE. (There's an announcement before the show that Opolais is unwell, so not in best form.) You'll need to go to about 20 minutes to cut the chat, most of it uninformative (though Andris Nelsons talks well about the music at 15 min)

When are western commentators going to realize that the Japan Puccini portrays is not the real  Japan? Madama Butterfly tells us no more about Japanese society than The Mikado. Puccini uses the exotic setting to emphasize the idea that westerners like Pinkerton know kaput about other civilizations. Puccini writes about what happens when one culture sees others only in its own context. Unfortunately too many westerners still think Madam Butterfly "must" fit their conception of what Japan ought to be.

The lady in the photo is Hamako Watanabe 渡辺はま子(1910-1999) There's an article about her in Japanese Wiki, but little in English. She was one of the big singing stars in Japan in the 1930's, 40's and 50's. HERE is a clip of her singing in 1939. A real Japanese song on the theme of Nagasaki and Madama Butterfly. Please listen as it's a genuine Japanese response to the opera.  Translation, help please ! Listen to the snippets from Puccini.  Nagasaki means different to Japanese than it does to most westerners. It was where the Potuguese in the 16th century, and later the Dutch, traded with Japan, so placing the opera in this city means a lot more than to those who know Asia. The idea that there was any single "Butterfly" original is sheer nonsense. There must have been hundreds of contacts, even though foreign communities in Nagasaki were closely monitored.

HERE is a link to a Japanese TV documentary about Ms. Watanabe, and shows her singing Shina no Yori (China Nights) in her 80's. Shina no yori is a story worth telling in more detail, so I'll write more another time.

Handel Rinaldo starts today at Glyndebourne

Handel's Rinaldo starts today at Glyndebourne, the second new production this season after Wagner Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (described HERE and HERE). Rinaldo is one of the great Handel bravura pieces, fabulous music and theatre.  Baroque isn't timid! At its premiere in 1711, the Spectator said that Rinaldo was filled with "Thunder and Lightning, Illuminations, and Fireworks"Please read the full interview with Luca Pisaroni in Opera Today. Very interesting singer. Here is a link to his superb Leporello at Glyndebourne in 2010.
Please also read my review of the Glyndebourne Rinaldo HERE. 

Rinaldo is a chaste Crusader, with whom Armida, Queen of Damascus, falls in love. Trouble is, she's a sorceress and her lover is Argante, the King of the Saracens, one of the feistier Handel anti-heroes. Meaty part, demanding fioratura elaboration, ideal for creating character. Luca Pisaroni's singing it at Glyndebourne today (and will be doing it again in Chicago later this year).

“I really look forward to embodying Argante at Glyndebourne”, he says, “because the music that Handel wrote for Argante is incredibly challenging.” His first aria “Sibillar gl’angui d’Aletto” is not only one of the best-known arias for bass-baritone but also one of the most difficult arias in the entire baroque repertoire." Having sung Tiridate in Handel's Radamisto at Santra Fe Opera, Pisaroni discovered "how exciting it is to portray a ‘bad guy’ on stage.....I had to push myself. It was really rewarding to explore such a dark personality and to get a great response from the audience. In life you never get away with being the bad guy! On an opera stage you do and everyone loves it! "
LOTS OF OTHER CLIPS and pieces on Glyndebourne Handel Rinaldo =- use search box or labels
photo : Marco Borggreve