Word: pavarottie
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Twenty-five years at the Met for Pavarotti and Domingo...
WHAT A CAREER. TENOR PLACIDO DOMINGO has made 79 opera recordings, and his repertory encompasses Verdi, Wagner, Mozart and Puccini, as well as French and Spanish opera. Pavarotti may rival him in vocal beauty, but no singer today is as versatile. So when Deutsche Grammophon set out to recap his two decades with the label, there was plenty to choose from. The first of 10 CDs of highlights to be released this year is Arias, Songs & Tangos. It is a monument to his vigorous musicianship. Over time Domingo's voice has become darker and richer, his style more fluent...
...Kanawa is an appropriately ingenuous Desdemona and sustains the first half of the last act beautifully with the "Willow Song" and the Ave Maria. Although her performance doesn't mesh entirely with Pavarotti's careful reading of his role (especially in the first-act love duet, which comes across more as two parallel soliloquies), her characterization is admirable, and she comes into her own in the second-act scene where she is admired by the chorus of men, women and children...
Beside the two other principals, Nucci is disappointing as Iago. His voice doesn't seem to provide the kind of deeply treacherous character that the role demands, and, in duets with Pavarotti's passionate warrior, Nucci comes across as an insipid foil rather than a calculating fiend. The tremendous aria Credo in un Dio crudel is unspectacular, and the orchestra actually unseats Nucci in places with its impressive rendering of Verdi's meticulously detailed score. Anthony Rolfe Johnson provides a beautiful Cassio, whose innocent virtue is not equalled by Nucci's sinister duplicity...
...faintly audible coughs, crowd noise does not detract. The few stage effects are effective rather than intrusive (especially Emilia's insistent knocking at the end of the last act). Overall, this is a powerful interpretation of Verdi's incredible tapestry, and it is led by an indefatigable hero. Bravo Pavarotti...