Freddie De Tommaso (tenor)
Il Tenore
Philharmonia Orchestra/Paolo Arrivabeni
rec. 2021, St Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead, London
Sung texts with English translations enclosed
DECCA 485 2945 [51]
This was awarded Recording of the Month status in June and I refer you to my colleague Göran Forsling’s review for more background to Freddie De Tommaso’s career and the programming of this latest release. Last year I also gave a qualified endorsement to his debut recital Passione. Once again, this album is rather short measure at just over fifty minutes but if the quality of singing is there, few will, I think, complain – and this time Decca have supplied texts and translations for the arias. While I wish as fervently as any operaphile for the arrival of a new star, having seen too many young singers flare and combust, I am cautious about emulating David Mellor in heralding De Tommaso as a superstar assured of a brilliant career until a little more time has elapsed and he has some track record. I have the same reservations about De Tommaso’s co-singer in the Tosca excerpt here, Lise Davidsen, but am looking forward to hearing her live next February in Tannhäuser at Covent Garden. However, I am pleased to report that this new release reveals both singers in the best, most promising light.
My main concern expressed in my review of Passione was that if De Tommaso has any weakness it resides in “a lack of vocal variety and colour” - a tendency to sing without sufficient nuance. Beautiful orchestral sound complemented by ideal engineering lending great immediacy to the listening experience are immediately apparent in the prelude to “Recondita armonia”, predisposing the listener to dispense with any such concerns - and the forthright manner in which De Tommaso delivers the aria proper dispels any further doubts. The amplitude of Davidsen’s voice as a formidable Tosca is another cause for celebration; the effulgence of their two voices in duet is enhanced by the latitude of Paolo Arrivabeni’s direction. He is decidedly indulgent in his application of rubato and pauses but this is music whose erotic frisson is only intensified by such freedom. Occasionally Davidsen’s vibrato borders on the obtrusive and I worry that the incipient huskiness in De Tommaso’s timbre should not follow that of Jonas Kaufmann and become devoid of squillo or “ping” as his voice develops, but at present these are two ideally matched singers who make an entirely credible couple and ensure that the “grand” epithet is very much a component of the “Grand Opera” they are singing. The lament “E lucevan le stelle” is searingly desperate in its intensity.
None of the excerpts here is exactly under-recorded and since Pavarotti, “Nessun dorma” has – undeservedly, of course - become almost hackneyed and is thus a brave choice. De Tommaso certainly makes a creditable job of it, even if his slightly cloudy tone is less penetrative than renditions by Pavarotti, Corelli or Björling. He injects credible remorse into Pinkerton’s “Addio fiorito asil”. I am less enamoured of Natalya Romaniw’s Cio-Cio-san; as ever with sopranos in this role, she sounds rather mature for a sixteen-year-old ingenue and is also a tad tremulous and over-vibrant. Her sound is sizeable but not without a hint of harshness. I am happier with the warmth of Aigul Akhmetshina’s mezzo-soprano as Carmen; her voice has power and depth.
The two Carmen excerpts seem like a good fit with the Puccini, in that they display the same quasi-verismo directness of raw emotion. De Tommaso manages a nice half-voice diminuendo on the B-flat of the big aria and both singers find real venom in their articulation of the text in the fatal encounter concluding the opera on words such as “démon” and “tiens!”. At over ten minutes, the finale extract is sufficiently extensive to allow us to become immersed in the drama. The Apollo voices make a respectively ethereal and spirited contribution to two tracks.
Having played this album once, I immediately returned to the beginning and replayed it to savour its virtues and check my initial responses. Several things struck me afresh: the excellence of the sound, the security of De Tommaso’s top B-flat on “Tosca, sei tu!” in the opening aria, the sheer size of Davidsen’s sound at key moments such as “È l’Attavanti!” and her versatility in already taking on such a variety of dramatic soprano roles in different repertoires, from Puccini to Beethoven to Strauss to Wagner.
As much as I enjoy it, I cannot say that any of the tracks here are superior to established classic recitals or complete recordings featuring tenors with a more truly Italianate pharyngeal openness of sound but there is still much to admire here.
Ralph Moore
Previous review: Göran Forsling
Contents
Giacomo Puccini
Tosca:
Recondita armonia
Mario! Mario!
É lucevan le stelle
Turandot:
Non piangere, Liù
Nessun dorma
Madama Butterfly:
Vogliatemi (Love Duet, Act I)
Addio, fiorito asil
Georges Bizet
Carmen:
La fleur que tu m’avais jetée (Flower Song)
C’est toi! / C’est moi! (Finale, Act IV)
Other performers
Lise Davidsen (soprano) (Tosca); Natalya Romaniw (soprano) (Cio-Cio-san); Aigul Akhmetshina (mezzo-soprano) (Carmen); Apollo Voices (8, 11)
