Voce D'Italia: Arias For Rubini
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Free Music Notes for Voce D'Italia: Arias For Rubini
Free Music Review: Wonderful
Hit: 5 Stars
Florez is my current Tenor hero - he sounds wonderful, expresive, exciting, and in full control. I look forward to hearing more of him as his career and artistry continue to grow. Free Music Review: The currenet Rubini and Mario
Hit: 5 Stars
Aside from missing the famous falsetto high "F," this guy has everything, including looks. I am pleased to have this recording. An outstanding artist for our time. Free Music Review: Florez for Rubini
Hit: 5 Stars
Voce D'Italia: Arias For Rubini Florez just gets better and better: powerful yet beautiful voice, musicality, and flawless diction.Free Music Review: Wonderful singing - but a slightly gimmicky idea
Hit: 5 Stars
I yield to no-one in my admiration for this Peruvian tenor superstar; his singing gives unalloyed pleasure to us canary fanciers whether live or on disc. I last heard him in the famous Royal Opera "Fille du Regiment" with Dessay, and he was terrific.
But let's be objective: the title of this CD is a tad misleading; in truth several of the arias here were either not specifically written for Rubini, or he was only tangentially or belatedly associated with them, singing them perhaps only once long after the premieres. We have little idea whether Rubini sounded anything like Florez though there's no reason why he should not offer this tribute to so influential a singer and I'm certainly not moaning about the singing; it's breath-taking for us - if not for Florez, whose ease of production is a thing of wonder. Nor is it the result of recording patchwork; Florez is just as capable of tossing off those fiendish roulades and stratospheric top notes in one recorded take as he is of doing them live. I don't really understand those reviewers who complain about pinched tone; the voice occasionally sounds a little strained but how could it be otherwise when Florez is singing in his lower register at the upper limits of male human performance - and without the mixed falsetto sound which marred Kraus' top notes and made him sound whiney.
Perhaps listening to this admirable CD in one sitting is a little too much to take; better to listen to a few tracks at a time to avoid auditory fatigue. Some have complained of a lack of characterisation in Florez' interpretations, especially when he is hopping from one opera to another, but I'm afraid I neither notice that nor really care; in any case just listen to the tenderness and variety of the third item, Donizetti's "Marino Faliero" (which was most certainly written by Donizetti expressly for Rubini and Florez sings it complete with a whopping full-voiced E flat), and you'll hear plenty to refute the accusation of sameness. That hint of strain which others can hear creeping into the highest notes is perhaps the price of the voice having acquired some darker colour of late. One or two top noters are not quite perfect, but to me he still sounds miles better than any other similarly voiced tenor around today. His is not the largest voice I have ever heard but it has such total concentration and purity of tone that it really carries in large spaces and I do not accuse the engineers of much knob-twiddling to enhance artificially the resonance of his voice production; his tenor really is cleanly focused and penetrating and in no need of boosting.
In many ways the first and the last items are the best, from the melodic genius of Bellini to the thrilling mastery of Rossini in "William Tell", in which Florez rises to all he demands of this most heroic of Rossini's tenor roles. The orchestra, chorus, supporting singers and conductor are exemplary. As for the solo singing, the elegance, the thrust, the plangency of the quieter passages, the sense of style and the pyrotechnics combine to make this a truly great recital 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.