Opera Reviews
28 March 2024
Untitled Document

Domingo captivates his Salzburg audience



by Moore Parker
Verdi: I due Foscari
Salzburg Festival
11 August 2017

This concert performance in Salzburg’s Großes Festspielhaus was an anticipated success, culminating in a standing ovation - primarily for Plácido Domingo who - despite being a septuagenarian among a cast in their vocal prime and singing a Fach that is not truly his - easily pocketed the vocalists’ laurels.

Francesco Foscari has been in the Mexican-born singer’s baritone stable for some five years - both in staged and concert showings - and indeed, here elevated an otherwise routine performance to become an occasion, drawing upon decades of performing acumen, vocal pacing, and dramatic instinct to captivate his audience.

While belying his age, Domingo’s vocal chords now often deliver phrases weighted with a beat rather than an integrated vibrato, sometimes dry and porous in quality, and lacking the mellifluous phrasing of bygone years. However, considerable tonal volume remains - sufficiently so for declamatory outbursts and well-considered effects which, still echo the performing grandeur associated with Domingo and his finest contemporaries in a generation now barely alive, let alone performing.  

The Salzburg line-up featured singers with established international careers singing with scores afore the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg and the Philharmonia Chor Wien, conducted by Michele Mariotti.

Firstly to Joseph Calleja as Jacopo Foscari. The Maltese tenor with a guy-next-door appeal and a sensitive artistic approach has featured a number of Verdi roles in his roster, including the high-lying Duke of Mantua. As Jacopo his musicality and finesse were evident - particularly in an appealing mid-register which responded easily, with a fine legato and a vibrantly-idiosyncratic vibrato well-suited this early, bel canto-embedded, Verdi composition. However, on this occasion passages above the stave continuously revealed a loss of tonal focus and brilliance, with the extremities virtually capitulating to the score’s demands. Hopefully, a temporary indisposition.

As Lucrezia, Guanqun Yu substituted - albeit, with several weeks  notice - for Maria Agresta. Yu had, incidentally, been handpicked in 2012 by Domingo personally for this role in Valencia following her success in Domingo’s Operalia singing competition. The attractive-looking, bright-timbred soprano projects her tone well, riding the ensemble scenes successfully - if a shade lightweight in vocal substance. Some fine moments were unfortunately countered by a general lack of polish, erratic scale work, and interpretative depth - leaving a rather clouded impression despite evident talent and potential.  

Roberto Tagliavini is a young Italian bass whose remarkable career has taken him to many of the world’s major houses. His finely-tuned, slender, instrument is well-focused and evidently more at home in the higher-lying than the lower passages of Loredano’s lines. However, even here Tagliavini was too easily swamped by the orchestra, and incapable of producing the ideal dramatic effect required by the part to fill a house of this size.

Further roles were competently executed by Bror Magnus Tødenes (Barbarigo), Marvic Monreal (Pisana), Jamez McCorkle (Council of Ten’s Attendant) and Alessandro Abis (Doge’s Servant).

In essence, an ensemble serving to underpin the star of the evening.

However, ultimately the  accolades must go to the non-vocalists - the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg and Michele Mariotti. Just over a decade into his career, the young Italian Maestro was named the finest conductor of 2016 by the Society of Italian Music Critics - and indeed his reading more than hinted at a legacy of great compatriot predecessors and masters of Verdian style - pointing to an optimistic future.  

Text © Moore Parker
Photo © Salzburger Festspiele / Marco Borrelli
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