Still reigning: Leo Nucci’s Rosenblatt Recital

By Mark Pullinger, 14 October 2015

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Reviewed at Cadogan Hall, London on 13 October 2015

Donizetti, Poliuto: Di tua beltade imagine

Bellini, Beatrice di Tenda: Qui mi accolse

Donizetti, Don Sebastiano: O Lisbona, alfin ti miro

Marcarini, Le 'donne' di Donizetti

Verdi, Macbeth: Mal per me m'affidai

Verdi, Album di 6 Romanze (Album of 6 romances): Non t'accostare all'urna

Verdi, L'esule

Verdi, I due Foscari: O vecchio cor, che batti

Verdi, Les Vêpres siciliennes (I vespri siciliani): Au sein de la puissance (In braccio alle dovizie)

Marcarini, Le 'donne' di Bellini

Rossini, Guillaume Tell: Sois immobile (Resta immobile)

Bellini, I puritani: Ah! Per sempre io ti perdei

Donizetti, La Favorita: Vien, Leonora, a' piedi tuoi

Rossini, Il barbiere di Siviglia: Largo al factotum

Verdi, Don Carlo: Per me giunto

Verdi, Don Carlos: Io morro

Verdi, Un ballo in maschera: Eri tu che macchiavi quell'anima

de Curtis, Non ti scordar di me

Verdi, Rigoletto: Cortigiani, vil razza dannata

Leo Nucci, Baritone

Paolo Marcarini, Piano

Italian Chamber Ensemble

Chung's Simon Boccanegra is worth a watch

James Imam, 8th February

If Chung is sometimes hailed as the greatest living conductor of Verdi, here was a performance to support that claim.

***11

Nabucco at La Scala

James Imam, 24th October

This was a performance that had you lickng your lips for Santi’s return next season with Zeffirelli’s time-honoured take on Aida.

***11

Netrebko returns to La traviata at La Scala

James Imam, 9th March

Netrebko's Violetta is now fuller in body and voice than in her former incarnation. Goodbye to the fresh-faced damsel we saw in Salzburg; hello to a larger-than-life courtesan in her twilight years.

*****

Nucci and Sierra thrill in La Scala's classic Rigoletto

James Imam, 13th January

Leo Nucci visceral animal of the stage has over 500 performances of the role under his belt, and, at the age of 73, he now eats this operatic challenge for breakfast

****1

Refreshing the classics: Barbiere at La Scala

Courtney Smith, 27th July

Bridging new and old, the young graduates of Teatro alla Scala's Academy joined seasoned Italian opera legends for an "Academy Project" performance of Gioachino Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's 46-year-old staging.

****1

Dreadful duplicity, misguided ardour: Luisa Miller

Sarah Batschelet, 16th December

Luisa Miller in Zurich is a finely crafted and intelligent production in which Verdi's music supports a tragic story of bourgeois respectability.

***11

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Mark Pullinger

Mark has been a Bachtrack editor since 2014. He is also an experienced critic, writing hundreds of reviews for the site, as well as a freelancer writing for other magazines and newspapers. He also writes programme notes and blogs on Substack. Mark has a particular passion for the operas of Verdi as well as Russian and French repertoire. Outside the concert hall and opera house, Mark enjoys cooking and travel and is probably at his happiest let loose in a French patisserie or a Viennese coffee house.

Still reigning: Leo Nucci’s masterly Rosenblatt Recital