Voce D'Italia: Arias For Rubini
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Music CD Cover Composer: Gioachino Rossini Composer: Vincenzo Bellini Composer: Gaetano Donizetti Conductor: Roberto Abbado Orchestra: Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Performer: Juan Diego Flórez Edition: Music CD Audio: English (Unknown); Spanish (Original Language) CD Release Date: 2008-01-22 Music Label: Decca Product features:
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Free Music Notes for Voce D'Italia: Arias For Rubini Album
Free Music Review: "Rarities,Yes; Gems, I'm Not So Sure
Hit: 3 Stars
The undeniably remarkable Juan Diego Florez, in an homage to the famous bel canto tenor Rubini, here sings a program of Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti rarities. Most of the great and consequently enduring tenor roles by these composers Florez has already recorded. In fact, only the Bellini "Sonnambula" and "Puritani" remain to be added to his recorded performances to complete what remains of the incontestably magnificent music for tenor in this repertoire. In the present CD, though, he mainly restricts himself just to rare arias that to my ears are less gems than repetitive and contrived musical boilerplate. It's for this reason, I suspect, most of these arias through the years have been justly neglected, if not wholly forgotten. Nostalgia, after all, has its limits.
The great Florez, sad to say, is currently stuck in a limited repertoire that includes only a handful of the greatest operatic roles; and as one reviewer has rightly suggested, the tenor currently lacks the vocal weight needed even for an Alfredo or Duke of Mantua.
Furthemore, as yet another reviewer has noted, Florez' voice is markedly beautiful in the present recording only in the middle register or when he sings softly. Here he does indeed convey an unusual and welcome warmth to complement his stratospheric vocal fireworks. The fireworks, however, in the form of acrobatic top notes are the problem. It was Rossini, it will be remembered, who first judged that the full voiced tenor high C was as ugly as the shriek of a belligerent capon. Florez' high notes, some even higher, verge off into the piercing and harsh, and after a time begin to irritate, much like a high-pitched dentist's drill. As the same earlier reviewer suggested, one hopes the marvelously gifted Juan Diego Florez does not wind up destroying his voice through repeated ventures such as this one.