Maltese Tenor Joseph Calleja Fills In for Villazon.

Poor Rolando wasn't feeling very good Friday night. So just an hour an a half before going onstage in the Vienna State Opera's La Boheme, he pulled out, and was replaced by 29-year old Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja.

There's been a lot of interest in this young man especially since Malta joined the European Union in 2004. His style is said to be "reminiscent of the great tenors of opera's golden age." (from Decca)

The Times of Malta reports the audience was so pumped about going to see Rolando that they were furious when they found out he wasn't going to show. Still, Joseph Calleja won them over, including Austria's largest paper, Die Presser:

"Joseph Calleja... swiftly managed to allay the discontent.

"He was (along with Boaz Daniel as Marcello) the best thing on this evening. (Mr) Calleja has a glorious, gratifyingly old-fashioned timbre, a terrific upper register and an ongoingly improving technique."

The Kurier Vienna amped up the praise: "The judgment of many people: A voice that radiates even more lyricism than Villazon's tenor."

I imagine Rolando is now doing his best to get better and back on stage! We recommend he stay away from mechanical bulls for a while.

But I'm glad for Joseph Calleja. The more top-notch tenors around, the better, I say.

Read more about Calleja on Wikipedia, and in this article from Music and Vision.

One Great Picture After Another: Gracias, Rolando.

Rolando Villazon is rapidly becoming my favorite opera personality. That’s PERSONALITY. Earlier this morning I posted the picture of him flying off a mechanical bull (scroll down) - now I’ve found another picture of him, screaming for a caption.



vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvUPDATEvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

I received some great caption suggestions! These include: (names hidden to protect the guilty):

• Look at the shine coming off that thing! I can see my tonsils! (LH)


• You used my lotion again? Have you no sense of personal property? (LH)


• Oh my gosh! What kind of moisturizer are you using? I simply must get a bottle for myself! (RR)


• So THIS is what you've been hiding! (Unprintable!) :) (RR)

AND THE WINNER IS:

With one misstep, Anna turns the performance into a soprano duet.

(Scott, from comments)

Thanks for the caption ideas, friends, and keep sending in those entries!

The lovely lady with Rolando here is the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko. In the picture above, they are playing Alfredo and Violetta in Verdi's La Traviata. The two work so well together, any production or recording teaming them is virtually guaranteed success.

If you want to hear Rolando and Anna sing, click here. A clip of them singing the Brindisi will start playing. The performance is from the 2005 Salzburg Festival, and features Eastern Washington’s favorite operatic son, Thomas Hampson.

In Every Opera, There's Downfall.

(AP Photo/Roberto Pfeil, Pool)

What the hell was Rolando Villazon doing Saturday on German TV?

Seems the Mexican superstar was riding a mechanical bull, wearing a jacket of what appears to be a red velvet. I don't know if that was meant to evoke the matador, seeing as he was on a bull (of sorts.) Was it maybe a stray costume from Carmen? At any rate, it's a pretty discordant convergence: velvet, mechanical bull, airborne tenor.

A mechanical bull. Will he soon come up with an album of re-interpreted country songs? (My hero Placido took his pipes to Annie's Song, which is...well...oh, never mind.) Will Rolando belt out The Yellow Rose of Texas? Well if he does, it will have to wait. His album just released last month contains zarzuela arias, with the orchestra conducted by none other than: Placido Domingo. I have to get it! Rolando really is excellent: I love that dark-chocolate-and-brandy feeling of his voice. Gotta hear how he interprets those zarzuelas, which often ooze raw emotion.

I hope Rolando has a good chiropractor.

And an ego somewhat sturdier than Roberto Alagna's.

If you understand German, here's the video of Rolando's German interview.

From an earlier post: opera writer Michael White says Rolando looks like Mr. Bean.

Turning a La Scala Tradition on its Ear.

As I prepped for my shift this morning with the BBC World Service in the background, my ears perked up at the mention of La Scala. The host was saying the world's premiere opera house has all sorts of rules, such as: you can’t wear purple there (I wish he said why!), and no encores, except on special days.

Bear in mind, an encore in an Italian opera house is not the same as an encore in most places – that is, at the very end of the concert. Rather, their version of an encore (a French word) is called bis (the Italian word for again, as in biscotti, the twice-baked cookie.) The bis is done in the manner of an instant replay. The audience doesn’t want to wait for the very end of the opera (or even an act of the opera). So with prolonged applause, cheering and calls of “bis! bis!” the conductor picks up the aria again, and the singer pipes up - this time usually out of character. I’ve read that the bis has been requested at the end of a death scene, which entails the now-dead character resurrecting temporarily to appease audience demand, then reassuming the death pose when the opera action resumes. As I’ve noted in previous posts, ludicrousness is just one of the things that make me love opera so! But Toscanini hated the way these encores broke the flow of an opera and put a ban on the practice.

Anyway, back to this week’s breach of the 74-year old bis ban.

On Tuesday night’s performance of La Fille du Regiment by Donizetti, rising Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez stirred the La Scala crowd in the aria Ah mes amis that has NINE high C’s! Count them! The applause went on for four, five minutes. The conductor caved. Picked up the baton, Juan let ‘er rip – and Toscanini rolled in his grave.

The BBC talked to opera critic Michael White about the incident this morning. He’s always very entertaining. He said Juan Diego Florez has immense appeal. “He looks like Errol Flynn,” said White.



As a point of comparison, White mentioned another top-notch young tenor, the Mexican Rolando Villazon, every bit as accomplished as Diego Florez. But, White said, he's not likely to cause the same stir, because "he looks like Mr. Bean!”



You decide.


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