MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively Crotchet   AmazonUK   AmazonUS

 

La Passione
see end of review track listing
Alfie Boe (tenor)
Matteo Saggese (piano)
Chris Cameron (piano)
Stephanie Gonley (violin)
Mauro Di Domenico (guitars, bouzouki)
Alfonso Deidda (Woodwinds, soprano saxophone)
John Parricelli (mandolin)
Nigel Hopkins (accordion)
The Metro Voices
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Valeriano Chiaravalle
rec. Angel Studios, London, 2007
EMI CLASSICS 5044112 [49.08]
Experience Classicsonline


Some years ago I attended a performance of Britten’s Albert Herring at Glyndebourne where the title role was sung by a very talented and very winning young tenor, Alfred Boe. He joined the young artists programme at the Royal Opera House, but also received the call to join the cast of Baz Luhrman’s La Bohème on Broadway. Boe took the latter course and in due course the Alfie Boe phenomenon was borne. This new disc, entitled La Passione, is intended ‘to reach a wider audience with classical music and to show that you don’t’ have to be a musical genius to enjoy it’.
 
But before we actually discuss the performances on this disc, perhaps we should consider why a tenor from Fleetwood in Lancashire is recording Neapolitan popular songs at all?
 
When Fred Gaisberg first recorded Neapolitan tenor Enrico Caruso, he discovered a singer whose voice was entirely suited to the new gramophone recording process and a phenomenon was born. Caruso was the first recording sensation, a singer who was made by the gramophone but whose singing helped make the gramophone popular. Like all singers of the period, Caruso had a repertoire of popular songs; light music for want of a better word. English singers recorded many, many English folk songs and parlour ballads. Caruso recorded the Neapolitan equivalent. But creation of the Caruso phenomenon has meant that Neapolitan popular song is required material for any operatic tenor worth his salt, even English lyric tenors from Fleetwood. An interesting side point here is that when Caruso recorded this repertoire the composers were alive - they were his contemporaries.
 
And make no mistake, Boe is still an operatic tenor. He might be attempting to corner the market in operatic populism, but he still appears on the operatic stage - he is doing The Merry Widow with ENO later this year - and still does recitals of operatic arias with ensembles like the Philharmonia Orchestra.
 
This disc casts its net relatively widely. In addition to well known Neapolitan songs Boe includes Leoncavallo’s Mattinata and Caruso by the contemporary Italian film composer Lucia Dalla. But the composers are only listed at the back in tiny script and there are no texts. You are encouraged to feel the passion and not worry too much about details.
 
From the opening of the first song, it is apparent that Boe has the manner down to a tee. His Italian sounds credible and his diction is excellent; he doesn’t sound like an Englishman singing Italian which is greatly to his credit. He is also something of a vocal actor as he has incorporated a number of the required tenorino mannerisms into his style. The results are moderately convincing and, at first, rather charming.
 
Boe sings the songs musically and with some care, in fact with too much care really. There are moments when you wish he would let go a little more. Unfortunately he seems to feel that the place to let go is on the high notes. Boe has an attractive lyric tenor voice, the closest that I can come to is Barry Banks, a tenor who specialises in the early 19th century repertoire. Both have silvery lyric voices which have a rather English cast to them. When Boe opens up on his top notes his silvery voice turns a little hard and no amount of Italian mannerism can make up for the fact that he lacks the Italianate darkness and depth that is needed for this type of song.
 
For the songs in the first half of this recital I came away feeling that Boe was trying far too hard to be something that he was not. Instead of taking Pavarotti as his model he should be using Heddle Nash. But in the second half of the disc we get rather fewer moments where Boe opens the throttle on his top register and keeps things at a lower temperature. The results are quite appealing and show what a fine musician he can be.
 
Ultimately I tired of his aping of the Italian manner. After 15 songs I still felt that he was buttonholing me and forcing me to notice how clever he was.
 
That said, this disc is well performed, well produced and Boe is ably supported by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Valeriano Chiaravalle.
 
If somebody buys this for their aunt or a cousin who has been caught up in the EMI/Alfie Boe marketing machine then they will certainly not damage their health and they might enjoy it and even consider going to hear Boe singing some real opera or operetta. Which, of course, is the intention behind the disc … isn’t it?
 
Robert Hugill

Track listing
Lucio DALLA (b.1943?)
Caruso
Ernesto DE CURTIS (1875–1937)/Giovanni Battista DE CURTIS (1860–1926)
Torna a Surriento
Luigi DENZA (1846–1922)/Giuseppe TURCO (1846–1907) (arr. Matteo Saggese)
Funiculì Funiculà
Gabriele D’ANNUNZIO (1863–1938)/Francesco Paolo TOSTI (1846–1916)
A Vucchella
Eduardo de CAPUA (1865–1917)/Giovanni CAPURRO (1859–1920)/Alfredo MAZZUCCHI (1878–1972)
O Sole Mio
Vincenzo VALENTE (1855–1921), Ernesto TAGLIAFERRI (1889–1937)/Libero BOVIO (1883–1942)
Passione
Agustin LARA (1900–1970)
Granada
Cesare Andrea BIXIO (1898–1978)/Ennio NERI
Parlami D'Amore Mariù
Salvatore di GIACOMO (1860–1934)/Francesco Paolo TOSTI (1846–1916) (arr. Matteo Saggese)
Marechiare
Teodoro COTTRAU (1827–1879) (arr. Matteo Saggese)
Santa Lucia
Eldo di LAZARRO (1902–1968)
Chitarra Romana
Eduardo di CAPUA (1865–1917)/Vincenzo RUSSO (1876–1904) (arr. Matteo Saggese)
Maria Mari'
Alberto BARBERISMichael GALDIERI
Munasterio' E Santa Chiara

Ruggiero LEONCAVALLO (1858–1919) (arr. Matteo Saggese)
Mattinata
Traditional (arr. Giancarlo Chiaramello)
Feneste Che Lucive

 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.