SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Rolando Villazón sings Handel Arias: Rolando Villazón (tenor), Lucy Crowe (soprano), Gabrieli Players, Paul McCreesh (conductor) Royal Festival Hall, London 3.5.2010 (JPr)


It must have originally seemed a good idea to Deutsche Grammophon’s ‘A and R’ people to promote Rolando Villazón’s new CD release of Handel arias with a short European tour. At the time the London concert was announced, Villazón’s profile was very high in the UK thanks to his participation as judge and mentor in the dire Popstar to Operastar celebrity show on ITV. He was perhaps the only person involved in that lamentable programme to emerge with his reputation unscathed and possibly enhanced and I thought this might explain the sky-high ticket prices for this concert; although subsequently I understand they may have been even higher in Germany. Whatever the explanation, asking £25 for a seat with a restricted view and £75 in the front stalls meant that the Royal Festival Hall was barely two-thirds full.

Since the passing of Pavarotti - and the decline of the other remaining two of the ‘Three Tenors’ - the recording companies and concert managements have been seeking a new tenor with the personality, all the notes and the ability to communicate what these legendary singers had. Villazón with his exuberance, heart-on-sleeve emoting and exotic curly-haired puppy-dog appearance - part Mr Bean, part Groucho Marx - would seem to be the whole package. When he first made a name for himself, he seemed to have the ideal voice for the romantic lyric territory but then sadly, illness of one sort or another blighted his career. He has recently recovered from an operation on his vocal cords so perhaps easing himself through a programme of Handel arias is a good way of continuing his recovery while still being able to return to the concert platform.

This concert, however, was something of an embarrassment though not a total disaster. What is immediately clear is that Villazón has clearly recovered from his surgery as his voice still has plangency, a burnished tone, smooth legato and a suitably forthright Italianate attack. He has recently made an operatic comeback in Vienna and Berlin, but even so, this voice is totally ill-equipped for Baroque arias which I guess were originally written for castrati and then transposed for middle range, or even lower, female voices. Villazón proceeded to sing them in keys that did not come easy to him although they did allow him to avoid all but a few top notes. Nevertheless, the coloratura that Handel demands defeated him, fioritura was of the ‘Laughing Policeman’ sort with lots of ha-hahhing, and he simply could not reach down deep enough for some of the lower notes.

It is also clear that no matter how inappropriate some repertoire might be for him, Villazón really revels in the opportunity to show-off. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, so that not even going wrong in Xerxes’s ‘Cruda furie’ and having to begin again, was going to stop him spreading his joy at being able to sing again for all of us in the audience. For good or ill, he is a stage animal par excellence and he committed himself to physically embodying every emotion he sang about by raising his eyebrows, rolling his eyeballs, biting his fist or flailing his arms, to display as appropriate, passion, anger, defiance or lingering farewell.

He was sensitively accompanied by Paul McCreesh and the period specialists, the Gabrieli Players, who were making their debut at the Royal Festival Hall. Their sound was perhaps a little too spare, dry, and colourless for such a large venue however and their own orchestral contributions were not quite the highlights that they might have hoped for. The Queen of Sheba’s arrival from Solomon went by so quickly that she might have been on roller-skates and the group also featured Katharina Spreckelsen’s shrill sounding oboe in the rather pallid Oboe concerto No. 3 in G minor.

The young British soprano Lucy Crowe showed up her more celebrated Mexican colleague by her vocal security in the upper register, radiant tone, and ability to embellish the gorgeous vocal lines of each of her solos, Cleopatra’s ‘Se pietà’ and ‘Da tempeste’ from Giulio Cesare.

Villazón’s best moments came in the second half of the concert with ‘Scherza infida’ which gave him the time necessary to overcome any technical difficulties and subtly marry text and music to produce a suitably impassioned and heart-rending account of Ariodante’s aria. This was followed by a bravura attempt at Bajazet’s call-to-arms ‘Ciel e terro’ from Tamerlano followed by a restrained and emotionally gripping account of this character’s death scene. Best of all was ‘Ombra mai fu’, the first of two encores (more Handel of course), which he sang very expressively though with his arms wide open, appealing to his audience. His theatrical mugging and excitability on the platform was to reach its zenith (or perhaps its nadir) with the ‘air guitar’ he played during his second encore, ‘Dopo notte’ from Ariodante. What next for him now then – a new series Operastar to Popstar perhaps?

His loyal fans gave him a standing ovation but surely only the diehards would have been convinced that he was enough of a Handelian to rush out to buy the CD if they hadn’t done already. Rolando Villazón will be showcased far better when he returns to the Royal Festival Hall in December for a concert with the Bolivar Soloists, of classic songs from his Mexican homeland.

Jim Pritchard