This CD will make you wish you could sing. Happily not called “Florez and Friends”, it’s a collection of arias and duets by the three great bel canto composers, and it is, as advertised, “spectacular”. The artists here are doing what they do better than anyone and making glorious music to boot, and they make it all seem effortless and fun. The only bit of disappointment is a silly one: Florez sings his much-encored-and-discussed, nine-high-Cs aria from Daughter of the Regiment, but this time in its Italian version. He does it so easily and with such aplomb that it almost goes by unnoticed, brilliant sheen to the upper register notwithstanding.
After that it’s one bel canto delight after another. Anna Netrebko joins the tenor in the thrilling, third-act duet from Puritani, sung in its original key, with its lovely melodies, blend of voices, and dazzling high-Ds. She sounds wonderfully warm and persuasive, and the two singers blend more effectively than you might imagine–two young ponies in their prime, let out to frolic around the track. Florez solos again in Fernand’s last-act aria, in French, from La Favorite, and sings with a rare plangency. The “Venti scudi” duet from L’elisir follows, and Florez and baritone Marius Kwiecien sing with fluency, wit, style, and “face”–a sheer comic delight with some optional high notes tossed in. “Una furtiva lagrima” shows up with an embellished vocal line and great sensitivity.
A duet from Linda di Chamounix with soprano Patrizia Ciofi is worthy of being played again the moment it ends; surely it contains one of Donizetti’s most appealing tunes, and the pair sings it with love and sincerity. An aria from the same opera follows, finding Florez again in a tender mode; indeed, his voice is beginning to take on some nice shading in the mid and bottom ranges. (This was a favorite number of Alfredo Kraus.)
A fun duet from Il viaggio a Reims pairs the tenor with Daniela Barcellona. She is a marvelous singer but lacks the light touch to hold up her end entirely, but this is nit-picking. A lachrymose aria Donizetti added to Lucrezia Borgia for a Russian tenor ends the formal part of the recital, and once more Florez’s wedding of feeling with text is admirable.
A bonus track features a duet from Rossini’s Otello, with Florez in the high-lying role of Rodrigo and Placido Domingo as the Moor. It’s a wonderful curiosity, and while Domingo could not have sung the whole role even in his prime, he does well by it here, even if most excursions above the staff and some of the fiorature have been eliminated. It seems like a gracious passing of the baton from one generation to another. The Orquesta de la Communitat Valenciana under Daniel Oren offers terrific accompaniments. This is a superb disc, a boon for lovers of great singing. [1/29/2009]
