COMPOSERS: Verdi
LABELS: ASV
WORKS: Il trovatore
PERFORMER: Gordon Wilson, Susan Bisatt, Gerard Quinn, Sarian Grevelle, Paul ParfittTallis Chamber Chorus, European CO & Chorus/Duncan Hinnells
CATALOGUE NO: CD DCS 225 DDD
This is the most effete, un-Italianate performance imaginable of Verdi’s popular melodrama with almost an entire cast of quite good Anglo-Saxon singers damagingly miscast. In the title role, Gordon Wilson reveals a pretty tenor voice but not much sense of drama, and delivers a most lacklustre account of the troubadour’s exciting cabaletta ‘Di quella pira’. Can the producer, Alexander Waugh, really have wanted his cast and conductor to perform in so inauthentic a style? Charles Osborne
Verdi: Il trovatore
This is the most effete, un-Italianate performance imaginable of Verdi’s popular melodrama with almost an entire cast of quite good Anglo-Saxon singers damagingly miscast. In the title role, Gordon Wilson reveals a pretty tenor voice but not much sense of drama, and delivers a most lacklustre account of the troubadour’s exciting cabaletta ‘Di quella pira’. Can the producer, Alexander Waugh, really have wanted his cast and conductor to perform in so inauthentic a style? Charles Osborne
Published: January 20, 2012 at 2:30 pm