Dessì+Armiliato: Ernani with (.) (.)

(photo danieladessi.com)

The excitement in Turin is palpable (heh) for the premiere at Teatro Regio of Ernani (the official site is here, Creative Commons free-for-dload version of an old recording here), where Opera Chic heroine Daniela Dessì will unleash her beautiful voice (and her ginormous bewbs) in the role of Elvira; her tall dark handsum boytoy Fabio Armiliato will be the heart-stealing bandit, and our dear Bruno Campanella, very clearly the best Rossini conductor in the world right now and a he-ll of a solid Verdi conductor, will conduct the operations. The staging is by the always interesting Pier'Alli.

An interview with Campanella (who considers Ernani part of the belcanto repertorio and warns against the dangers of conducting the opera in too muscular a fashion, and he explains that the pianissimi are the key to the score) is here and one with Pier'Alli is here.

And La Stampa carries today a very cool interview in stereo with the singing loving couple.

Let's see.

Your favorite opera?

Dessì: "Tosca, because I see her in myself: Tosca c'est moi".

Armiliato: "Andrea Chènier, because it was my first opera with Daniela" (aaaaaaawwww that's sweet).

Your least favorite opera?

Dessì: "La Rondine. I've been asked to many times, but it just doesn't interest me"

Armiliato: "L'Elisir d'Amore, because nobody has ever asked me to be in it"

The most important asset for a singer?

Dessì: "Three qualities: patience, calm, serenity. If you're nervous, you sing badly"

Armiliato: "Brains. Many people do not think this is the case, but you mostly sing with your brain".

The favorite singer from the past?

Dessì: "Too easy, Maria Callas"

Armiliato: "Beniamino Gigli. I grew up listening to his records all the time. I still listen to them, one can only learn from him".

The favorite singer from today?

Dessì: "Mariella Devia. Extraordinary technique"

Armiliato: "Juan Diego Florez, the most reliable"

What do you do when you're not working?

Dessì: "First, I'm a mom"

Armiliato: "First, I'm a dad. And I am the webmaster of Daniela's official website, and my own website. I'm a soccer fan, I love Sampdoria. And I hope they won't trade Quagliarella, please stay!"

Besides your partner, you'd like to sing with...?

Dessì: "Johnny Depp!"

Armiliato: "Really? OK, Monica Bellucci for me..."

No, seriously??

Dessì: "Maybe Domingo, he always moves me"

Armiliato: "Dolora Zajic, a mezzo. She brings luck to my life, she was singing with me for my Metropolitan debut and for my San Francisco debut"

Which is more damaging for a singer, a bad director or a bad conductor?

Dessì: "A bad conductor. You can find a compromise with a director"

Armiliato: "I agree with Daniela, a bad director can make you look silly, a bad conductor will ruin your show"

Your pet project?

Dessì: "My first Norma next year in Bologna"

Armiliato: "My first Otello, next year in Malaga"

You're a couple in real life, does it help you in your work?

Dessì: "Yes, I think about Fabio and my anxiety vanishes" (ed: aaaaawwwwwwwww)

Armiliato: "Yes, of course, you enjoy your work more, the way the great showbusiness families of the past did"

Your partner's greatest quality?

Dessì: "His honesty"

Armiliato: "Her sweetness"

Your partner's not-so-great quality?

Dessì: "Can I say this? He snores a lot"

Armiliato: "I don't snore, I practice in my sleep".

The thing Italian opera houses need the most?

Dessì: "One-year-contracts for all..."

Armiliato: "Yes, with yearly auditions. Meritocracy is a guarantee of artistic quality".

***update*** Since Dessì mentions her Tosca, possibly her best role and certainly the one she's most famous for, here it is courtesy of YouTube. Consider that her interpretation is even more impressive than her plunging neckline here, and with that push-up costume that's saying quite a lot:

And since Fabio deserves his share of YouTube blav as well, here's his -- frankly, standing-ovation-worthy, dang! -- "Nessun Dorma". Also check out the YouTube comments for a funny digression on Fabio's famously abundant "knödel".

Comments

[Idreno]

Will they be able to hear her in Ernani!?!

Okay, but seriously folks, I think I need to open this up for discussion. Let me start off by saying that from what I have heard of Dessi on recordings, the voice is a beautiful quality and she seems to be very musical, but even on recording it is difficult to hear her! She is completely drowned out as Gilda in Act III, for example! And Gilda is definitely one of the 'lighter' Verdi soprano roles, albeit, it really isn't light!

I have always questioned Dessi's descisions to hail her self (or be hailed as) a Verdi soprano - I find that her voice, as presented in the recording studio and with live recordings, far too small and often lost in the mix. I admit, I have not heard her live so I cannot declare this as a fact, but I do find it difficult to enjoy any recordings that she is on because the voice seems to be inadequate in size and weight for the dramatic repertoire.

Campanella has always been a great conductor, and I would have to admit that he's correct that Ernani is going to have to be played and sung pianissimo if she is going to be singing Elvira. It is NOT an easy or light role - many sopranos (Freni, Leona Mitchell, for example) attempted the role and retired her quickly because they knew that one really needed a voice like Leontyne Price, Zinka Milanov, the young Regina Resnik, even Sylvia Sass, in order to just get through the role! It is big, heavy, loud singing. Of course it is 'Bel Canto' - Verdi remains a 'Bel Canto' composer until Un ballo in maschera. His compositional style was directly influenced by the 3 Italian greats who preceeded him, but what Verdi did in his operas was demand a way of singing and such a presence of brass in his music that voices needed to reconfigure themselves to accommodate his requests! Elvira is just a younger sister to her big sisters Abigaille, Lady Macbeth, Odabella, and Griselda - technically speaking, the voice that can sing all of those is the same voice that should also sing Elvira.

I am glad that houses like the Met and Torino are starting to desire to present some of the 'forgotten' Verdi operas, but I think they need to do a bit better searching for the appropriate voices that are really able to bring the works to life the way they should be. Just listen to L. Price and Corelli's recording from the Met back in the 60's - THAT is how Ernani needs to be sung!

[Opera Chic]

good comment, lots of stuff in there. but Dessì's voice is not that small. and Elvira is a soprano drammatico di coloratura -- the best Elvira ever was Rosa Ponselle, not Birgit Nilsson

check her out:

http://www.rosaponselle.com/listen.html

[coccodrillo]

She's a total MILF. Operachic I insist, start a operamilf.com site, you'll make MILLIONS

[CrewMantle]

Kinda figure Dessi is about the bewbs anyway...

I agree with Idreno's observations regarding vocal weight (I believe he meant Giselda in I Lombardi, Griselda being more at home in the 18th century with Handel among others).

Sutherlands last complete recording was Ernani with Pavarotti if anyone cares to know...Elvira works here as she is an assertive girl (ignoring the loving tempo that is).

Ponselle is an excellent choice OC btw, IF one is obliged to listen to the piece. The music for Carlo is preferred overall; very majestic.

[Idreno]

Yes, OC, Ponselle was one of the greatest Elvira's - and thanks for the 'Giselda' correction - twas a typo!

Elvira would be considered a 'Soprano drammatica d'agilita' - which is a term Leyla Gencer used to describe herself. However, I do believe there needs to be a distinction between the roles such as the Bellini and Donizetti heronies and the Verdi gurls - cuz there is a distinctive shift in weight for many of them. I don't know if Nilsson ever sang Ernani, but she was extraordinarily successful with Lady Macbeth and quite possibly could have handled Elvira, albeit with some difficulties in the aria cabaletta - and also we had gurls like Dimitrova who owned Abigaille and sang the Lombardi's and Macbeth's and Ernani's and Attila's. Cristina Deutekom was a singer who, whether you like certain qualities in her voice or not, had a voice with ample weight and flexibility and range in order to accommodate all those roles. Caballe and Sutherland, for example, both with enormous voices, the weight wasn't distributed in such a way that made those heavy Verdian roles suitable to them. Caballe was supreme with middle Verdi - things like Corsaro and Aroldo and Alzira and certainly Sutherland sang the crap out of Masnadieri - but really, those earliest of Verdian soprano roles are on a level all their own - normally we would describe them simply as roles for a dramatic soprano rather than a dramatic coloratura soprano.

I do think Sondra Radvanovsky is a great choice for the part at the Met next season - although I appreciate many qualities of her singing, I must admit that I think her vibrato really gets in the way of her sound - having heard her live at the Met several times, there were moments when the voice opened up with such clarity - the sound was HUGE!! One of the biggest voices around today, I would venture to say - but I really have an aversion to voices with such fast vibrato, especially more dramatic voices.

[CrewMantle]

I do so hate to offer this as I am on quite the same page of what is obvious. But for correct edification, Birgit considered Lady Macbeth her one great mistake, as did most philes of the day. There is something good to always be said of 'boom box' soprano's who have given us years of excellent work. They certainly deserve to throw caution to the wind and sing the odd role that doesn't perfectly suit.

[Opera Chic]

La Sondra! she's cool, and she seems nice enough if a bit on the uninspiring side. but back to Ernani, I think that its most evident traits -- the constant clashes, "confrontations at every turn" to borrow Budden's phrase, the heavy instrumentation -- cannot mask Verdi's torrent of ideas, he superimposes his personality and his future style all over this traditional, sometimes hackneyed piece. Ernani is so incredibly full of LIFE and big, sometimes not-yet-perfectly-clear ideas -- to me it's superior to Nabucco. it never left the Italian repertoire for a reason, you see Verdi's bulging musckles rippling underneath that old suit -- he's Bruce Banner just about to explode into the Hulk and there's no way back.

for all these reasons, a more dramatic soprano can appear to be more succesful a choice; but again I trust Campanella's instincts (my beloved Maestro Muti got Ernani badly wrong in the early 1980s, I have the b00tleg evidence on tape somewhere back in the US, he got it wrong because he indulged the score's weaker points, and it collapsed on him) but if you control the brashness, and I trust a Rossinian great such as Campanella to be able to do that, esp if you control the wind instruments at the right times, then you accomplish something great, and a lighter soprano voice can totally fly.

and I'll post about her soon, but if you think you need a lot of powah to do Elvira, check out the second-best Elvira ev4r after Ponselle: Ilva Ligabue

http://www.amazon.com/Verdi-Ernani-Giuseppe/dp/B00066FBY8/ref=sr_1_9/102-1269768-5375363?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1182295712&sr=1-9

http://www.amazon.com/Verdi-Ernani-Giuseppe/dp/B000062XBE/ref=sr_1_16/102-1269768-5375363?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1182295712&sr=1-16

[CrewMantle]

Ilva Ligabue????

Dear DEAR OC; your far to young and tasteful to have known of an eccentric singer such as Ilva Ligabue! Ore at least thats what I'd 'ave thought.

I found Miss Ligabue when I acquired a minor collection of around 200 operas... let me think..what 17.4 years ago. Although I was much upbraided at the time by an arch rival collector for her inclusion. (I finally informed him of ur existance last week.. good of me I thought..).

Now that you have made Ilva fashionable, I will have to go and look her up tomorrow and see what she can do.

[Donna Anna]

Ms. Rodvanovsky sang Leonora in Trovatore at this past May Festival and from all accounts, rocked the house. A colleague who sings in the chorus and whose opinion I respect enormously said she was awe-inspiring and had to stop the ovations.

As for Amiliato, I'd never heard him before but after watching the youtube clips, omg, what rock have I been under? He's flat out amazing. Indeed, who says there are no more verismo tenors out there? He a powerhouse! Thanks, OC, for being such a great opera nudge.

[flipstinger]

hey there OC!

girl - thank you ever so much!!! i enjoyed reading this Dessi/Armiliato blogga urs. also the cool interview - nice!

don't care what others say 'bout this beautiful couple - they're still my fav!

they compliment each other fo sure!
BREAK A LEG in Torino guys...