About 35 of the 66 minutes on this CD are taken up with performances of three of Rossini’s most popular overtures, and while the readings here are lively and have a nice spontaneity (everything here was recorded live in the Netherlands), better readings exist elsewhere (Marriner on Philips; Norrington, with period instruments and a fresh look on Virgin). So the draw is the tenorizing of William Matteuzzi, captured here in 1997 and 1998.
Matteuzzi, who has practically a cult following in Italy, is a very light-voiced tenor with superb agility and an outrageously high extension–on this CD he lands on and sustains high-Es and a high-F (that’s above high-C!). An octave lower the voice can be sweet and engaging (though less so than in the early ’90s); his phrasing in tender passages is intelligent and musical (the early part of the L’Italiana aria is lovely). The high notes–C, D, E, F–are now produced in a strangely nasal fashion that is not appealing; they’re more like stunts than musical expressions. But his agility is staggering: Idreno’s spirals are tossed off cavalierly in the Semiramide aria and Rodrigo’s big aria from Otello is lunged into with abandon and even further embellished.
But the real showpiece is the almost never-heard “Qui tollis” from the composer’s Messa di Gloria of 1820, possibly the most florid piece Rossini ever wrote. Matteuzzi sings it very fast (it’s a 10-minute work) and smudges some of the coloratura, but it’s the fact that he does not smudge so much of it that is so breathtaking. Nevertheless, in exchange for this virtuosity, the listener must cope with a series of squeezed, pretty weird high notes that make the tenor sound hysterical–and frankly, it doesn’t fall well on the ear. Aside from the “Qui tollis” (which otherwise is unavailable–there used to be a complete Messa on LP with tenor Ugo Benelli, but it has disappeared), several recorded tenors are preferable in the arias presented here, Juan Diego Florez being the primary, and most desirable one.
