Last weekend while you were hand washing your panties, flossing your teeth, and stocking-up on beef jerky at Costco, Giuseppe Filianoti discreetly sang in his first Italy performance since that ugly and perplexing December 2008 la Scala debacle, where he was yanked out last minute of the Daniele Gatti-conducted Don Carlo by Scala GM Stéphane Lissner during La Scala's prestigious opening night -- the dismissal so unceremonious that even Placidone publicly spoke out in defense of the snubbed tenor.
The Italian tenor, who was plagued by vocal difficulties these past few years, miraculously seem to be a shadow of the past. He's rebounded from the la prima drama, finding great success outside of Italy this past year. In 2009 he's sailed through performances of L'elisir's lead at London's ROH, Chicago's LOC, and Paris's Opera Bastille; In New York he was called-in as Rolando Villazón's Edgardo sub in Lucia di Lammermoor) while the Los Angeles Opera called him in as a Rolando sub for L'elisir. Most recently we posted about him in Berlin Munich, where the toned tenor sang Nemorino in a pair of white boxers and a matching wifebeater in a NSFW David Bösch L'elisir at the Bayerische Staatsoper.
His intelligent, lyric tenor was trained under legendary Alfredo Kraus (ours & Juan Diego Florez's unabashed idol), later deigned and tutored by Riccardone Muti, and although he's based in Northern Italy, he returned last week to Ancona's Teatro delle Muse to sing in a concert version of Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia. Mariella Devia, one of the best Lucrezia of our time, sung the lead, accompanying Filianoti. He added the rarely heard aria, “Anch’io provai le tenere smanie” (scribbled by Donizetti for a recital at Paris's Théâtre des Italiens in 1840. Back with a bang, we're happy to see him back in the saddle so soon.
Commandopera posted a few videos from the performance, and you can go here for more.
Act 1 aria - Di pescatore ignobile