GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813 – 1901): Noble Renegades– Scenes and Arias from Don Carlos, I due Foscari, Macbeth, Un ballo in maschera, I Lombardi alla prima crociata, Luisa Miller, Jérusalem, and Il corsaro— Charles Castronovo, tenor; Kristin Sampson, soprano; Tomas Pavilionis, tenor; Tadas Girininkas, bass; Kauno Valstybinis Choras (Kaunas State Choir), Kauno simfoninis orkestras (Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra); Constantine Orbelian, conductor [Recorded in Kaunas State Philharmonic Hall, Kaunas, Lithuania, 27 – 29 June 2022; Delos DE3605; 1 CD, 55:58; Available from Outhere Music/Delos, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Music (UK), and major music retailers and streaming services]
Lamentation is one of the cornerstones of opera, on and off the stage. Purcell’s Dido, Händel’s Bertarido, Bellini’s Elvino, Wagner’s Brünnhilde, and Strauss’s Ariadne lament their lovers’ betrayals, real or perceived, and aficionados lament the dearth of voices capable of reaching past generations’ highest standards of singing those characters’ music. Disenfranchised opera lovers sometimes suggest that certain repertoire should be shelved lest it be sung inadequately—an understandable proposition but one that is inherently inimical to the nurturing of new generations of singers. It is true that there are no Flagstad, no Varnay, no Mödl and Nilsson in today’s performances of Götterdämmerung and Tristan und Isolde, but there are dedicated, gifted singers giving of their best who deserve to be heard. In the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, more of which are now included in the international repertory than at any previous time since the composer’s death in 1901, paragons of refinement and vocal refulgence are similarly rare, but this is no recent phenomenon. There is no Carlo Bergonzi singing Verdi’s tenor rôles in this third decade of the Twenty-First Century, operaphiles justly complain. Indeed, Bergonzi can no longer be heard except on recordings, but in the singing of Charles Castronovo today’s Verdi lovers have cause to curtail their lamenting.
Born in Queens and raised in California, Castronovo can be said to have benefited from the artistic traditions of both American coasts, his early engagements with Los Angeles Opera fostering formative contact with accomplished Verdians and opening avenues to venerable East-Coast and European institutions. Despite having garnered acclaim as Alfredo in La traviata, the Duca di Mantova in Rigoletto, and Fenton in Falstaff in some of the world’s most prestigious venues, as well as recording an exhilarating portrayal of Alfredo opposite the Violetta of Marina Rebeka for Prima Classic, he was not heard in a Verdi rôle at the Metropolitan Opera, with which company he débuted in 2001 as Beppe in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, until October 2023, when he portrayed Gustavo in a revival of David Alden’s provocative staging of Un ballo in maschera.
What might appear to be a regrettable series of missed opportunities yielded an atypical occurrence in today’s opera world: a singer taking the right rôle at the right time, particularly in a house of the MET’s size and significance. [In the performance attended by this author on 27 October 2023, Castronovo’s Gustavo—heard from the second row of the Grand Tier—easily filled the capacious auditorium with firm, well-supported sound and ample evidence of the charisma that so enamored Angela Meade’s Amelia, fueled the jealousy of Quinn Kelsey’s Anckarström, and earned the loyalty of Liv Redpath’s Oscar.] That Castronovo’s expansion of his Verdi résumé is in reaction to his cognizance of vocal readiness is validated by his singing on Noble Renegades, this Delos recording of scenes from works ranging from the early I due Foscari and I Lombardi alla prima crociata to the original 1867 Paris version of Don Carlos.
Like a number of praiseworthy Delos projects in recent years, Noble Renegades enjoys sterling support from the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra and conductor Constantine Orbelian. Playing with reliable professionalism, sophistication, and well-rehearsed ensemble, the Lithuanian ensemble’s musicians bring equal adroitness to both the bel canto writing of the earlier scores and the more symphonic later works, the development of Verdi’s instrumental writing surveyed with comprehension of its origins and ultimate destinations. The voices of the Kaunas State Choir are added to their company in the excerpts from Luisa Miller and Il corsaro, and the choristers’ efforts equal those of their orchestral colleagues in preparedness and excellence of execution.
As in his discs of Verdi arias and scenes with Sondra Radvanovsky and Dmitri Hvorostovsky and the late baritone’s complete recordings of Rigoletto and Simon Boccanegra, Orbelian exhibits laudable affinity for all variations of the composer’s style. His tempi are at once propulsive without rushing and respectful of his soloist’s breathing without languishing, and each of the scenes included in the programme offers a suggestion of the unique atmosphere of the opera from which it is drawn. Only occasionally, as in the solo scenes from Macbeth and Un ballo in maschera, are the performances more redolent of the studio than of the opera house, but the avoidance of overwrought mannerisms is most welcome.
Though Richard Tucker, Jon Vickers, and Franco Corelli sang the rôle in its Italian incarnation thrillingly, spinto and dramatic voices cannot claim exclusive rights to the music for the titular prince in Don Carlos. Remembered for singing parts like Don Ramiro in Rossini’s La Cenerentola and Ernesto in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale (a rôle in which Castronovo also garnered acclaim), Catalan tenor Juan Oncina proved to be an unexpectedly effective Don Carlo, his bel canto credentials yielding particularly sensitive handling of Verdi’s vocal lines. The success of Castronovo’s excursion into the forest of Fontainebleau in Carlos’s Act One scene is more predictable. Often reminiscent of that of the young José Carreras, Castronovo’s varnished-mahogany timbre shimmers in ‘Fontainebleau! Forêt immense et solitaire,’ the vowels shaped with an equilibrium between proper Francophone nasality and Latin openness that ideally suits the music. The finesse that can elude larger voices blossoms in this voice’s reading of the aria ‘Je l’ai vue, et dans son sourire.’ Carlos is sometimes the least-interesting character in performances of Don Carlos, but Castronovo weds the Infante’s words with melody hypnotically, the tenderness within the man’s troubled soul communicated to the listener with diaphanous tones.
Jacopo Foscari in I due Foscari was one of the first rôles that Bergonzi sang—and in which his work was documented on records, owing to a 1951 broadcast performance in conjunction with Italian radio’s observance of the fiftieth anniversary of Verdi’s death—after transitioning from baritone to tenor. Bergonzi’s legacy of Verdi singing is rightly ubiquitous, but Castronovo extends his own legacy with his singing of Jacopo Foscari’s scene from the opera’s first act, in which he is ably partnered by tenor Tomas Pavilionis’s Fante dei Consiglio dei Dieci. Declaiming ‘Qui ti rimani’ incisively, the tenor intimates that the fuse of the Doge’s son’s temper burns brightly and rapidly. The aria ‘Dal più remoto esilio’ is sung with passion befitting the character and the suavity demanded by the music, Verdi’s arching vocal line sustained with instinctual phrasing and control. The drama of the cabaletta ‘Odio solo, ed odio atroce’ is heightened by the restraint of Castronovo’s performance, the music truly sung rather than shouted.
Considering the relatively brief duration of the rôle of Macduff in Macbeth, the variety of famed tenors who have portrayed the character, whether on stage or in recording studios, is incredible—and attributable to the part having in the opera’s fourth act one of Verdi’s most beautiful arias for tenor. As sung by Castronovo on this disc, Macduff’s grief for his murdered children bursts viscerally from ‘O figli, o figli miei,’ the voice suffused with paternal affection and regret. ‘Ah, la paterna mano’ is voiced with simmering pain and burgeoning determination to enact justice, the aria’s top B𝄫 a grieving father’s despondent cry, not a display of a tenor’s vanity. A hard edge intermittently emerges in the upper register, but this is put to apt use as an aural manifestation of characters’ inner conflicts.
Recorded a year in advance of his MET appearances as Gustavo, Castronovo’s performance on this disc of the doomed Swedish king’s scene from Act Three of Un ballo in maschera might be said to be a delayed preview of his approach to the rôle. His phrasing of ‘Forse la soglia attinse’ conveys aristocratic integrity, but despair and desperation are also discernible in the fervor with which the words are enunciated. As was true of his performance of the aria in New York, the contrasting complexity and simplicity of Gustavo’s predicament resound in ‘Ma se m’è forza perderti.’ As a man in love with a woman who is already committed to a strong-willed, dangerous husband, Gustavo is a typical operatic protagonist, but his sacrifice of first his own happiness and then his life for the preservation of his beloved’s honor qualifies him as one of the noble renegades of the disc’s title. Even without this psychological context, the vocalism is compelling, the line caressed with beautifully-judged dynamic gradations.
An added pleasure of Castronovo’s pulse-quickening traversal of Oronte’s oft-excerpted scene from Act Two of I Lombardi alla prima crociata is the singing of the music for Oronte’s mother Sofia by soprano Kristin Sampson, who makes each word and note matter. With such an able partner, Castronovo devotes perceptibly sharpened concentration to the drama of ‘O madre mia, che fa colei,’ conjuring a persuasive sense of the scene’s consequence in I Lombardi’s cumulative narrative flow. Far more tenors include the aria ‘La mia letizia infondere’ in their concert and recital repertoires than ever perform the complete opera, but few recorded interpreters handle the aria and its cabaletta, ‘Come poteva un angelo,’ as idiomatically as Castronovo. The upper register always integrated with both the music’s melodic progression and the voice’s lower reaches, the tenor’s vocalism shimmers with reverent zeal, Oronte’s demeanor febrile but still that of the son of a governor of Antioch.
Castronovo is joined by Pavilionis’s Contadino and bass Tadas Girininkas’s Wurm in a superb performance of music from Act Two of Luisa Miller, a masterful score that continues to be neglected by too many opera companies—even as Verdi-loving a company as the MET, the ninety-three performances that Luisa has received there dwarfed by the showings amassed to date by Rigoletto (926), La traviata (1,056), and Aida (1,191). Rodolfo’s lines in ‘Il foglio dunque?’ are delivered with ringing conviction, Castronovo’s vocal colorations corruscating with the emotional shifts in the text. ‘Quando le sere al placido’ is one of the last true bel canto arias for tenor, and the performance that it receives here honors its kinship with Donizetti’s music for characters like Fernand in La favorite. The arching melody, recalling that of Fernand’s ‘Ange si pur,’ unfurls like a silk banner, borne aloft by the tenor’s beautiful tone and well-honed technique. His trademark expressive intensity cascades through ‘Di me chiedeste’ and the cabaletta ‘L’ara, o l’avello apprestami,’ notes above the stave projected with arresting bravado.
Having been urged since 1845 by the company’s intendant Léon Pillet to write an opera for the Académie Royale de la Musique in Paris, Verdi relented in the summer of 1847 by accepting Pillet’s commission to adapt I Lombardi to a French libretto written by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz, familiar in Italian opera circles for having supplied the text for Donizetti’s La favorite. Despite containing new music that demonstrates the advances in his style since the completion of I Lombardi at the end of 1842, the resulting work, Jérusalem, is one of Verdi’s least-performed operas. Castronovo chose as one of his noble renegades Jérusalem’s Gaston, vicomte de Béarn, a rôle sung in the opera’s November 1847 première in Salle Le Peletier by Gilbert Duprez. Singing Gaston’s scene for Act Three, Castronovo is an expert successor to Duprez, the words of ‘L’infamie! Prenez ma vie!’ providing the momentum for stirring vocalism. His performance of ‘Ô mes amis, mes frères d’armes’ throbs with feeling but maintains stylistic fidelity and elegance, cogently advocating for a reevaluation of Jérusalem‘s merits.
First performed in Trieste in 1848, Il corsaro shares with I due Foscari the seeming distinction of being derived from a work by Lord Byron, yet its libretto is subjected to near-universal derision. Whatever limitations Francesco Maria Piave’s adaptation of its Byronic source material imposes upon the opera’s palatability for Twenty-First-Century audiences, a strong performance of Il corsaro substantiates that Verdi’s score can overcome the scorned plot. Castronovo reserves some of his most polished vocalism for the corsair Corrado’s Act One aria ‘Tutto parea sorridere all’amor mio primiero,’ the security of his singing throughout the compass augmenting the histrionic impact of his clear diction. Each thought limned in ‘Pronti siate a seguitarmi’ is here as vital as the notes and words with which it is imparted. The cabaletta ‘Sì, de’corsari il fulmine’ serves as an electrifying finale for Noble Renegades. Singing with rabble-rousing machismo of the sort seldom heard in today’s indifferent, too-cautious performances of Verdi repertoire, Castronovo restores to this scene the swashbuckling grandeur that it needs.
The nobility of each character portrayed on this recording and of the singer bringing them to life is obvious, but Castronovo is the most radical of these renegades. There is no lack of poetry and poise when they are required, but this is not polite, gratuitously pretty singing. This is Verdi as his music was meant to be sung.