Who: Sondra Radvanovsky
What: Verdi’s Il Trovatore in HD from The Met
When: Saturday, April 30 at 1 p.m.
Where: participating Cineplex theatres
Check: www.cineplex.com
Cost: $21.95, senior $19.95, child $12.95 (plus taxes)
When it comes to Verdi, anything you can sing, she can sing higher.
And that’s just the way soprano Sondra Radvanovsky likes it.
“Verdi demands a lot from singers,” said Radvanovsky over the phone from New York recently. “I like the challenge of having to sing high, very high, then very low, loud and soft, and to do all these vocal tricks, diminuendi going from loud to soft on a note. I like that. It’s fun. And it’s what my voice likes to do.”
Anyone who’s heard Radvanovsky--she was in the Canadian Opera Company’s Aida last season--can vouch that she’s not making this up, or inflating her abilities. For a review of her performance as Leonora in Franco Zefferelli’s production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore at the Arena di Verona last summer, follow this Archive to August 11, 2010 “Terrific Trovatore.”
And speaking of Trovatore, Radvanovsky, a landed immigrant and former Oakville resident, who now resides with her husband, Duncan, on a 10 acre spread in Caledon, will take centre stage as Leonora in the Metropolitan Opera’s worldwide HD simulcast of the David McVicar staging this Saturday.
Leonora has been Radvanovsky’s calling card role for years. She’s sung it at least 150 times beginning in 1998 with a Met in the Park concert led by Marco Armiliato, ironically the same maestro who’ll be in the pit for the HD show. Simply put, Radvanovsky is the Leonora of her generation.
“Leonora is, for me, probably the best sitting role vocally that I’ve ever sung,” said Radvanovsky who also admitted that she doesn’t hesitate to interpolate high Cs and D flats in her ornamentation--when conductors allow that sort of artistic liberty.
Not only does the role sit well in her voice, but after so many performances and in spite of the opera’s inane plotline (is it any wonder that the Marx Brothers included Trovatore in their zany A Night at the Opera?), Radvanovsky still empathizes with her character.
“For me, Leonora is probably the most real of all the characters in the opera,” explained Radvanovsky, “because she’s just a young woman who’s fallen in love with, as everyone else has done, the wrong man.”
And speaking of men, none other than Marcelo Álvarez and Dmitri Hvorostovsky are cast opposite her as Manrico and Count di Luna respectively. Yes, the very same chaps who were in that Verona production.
For some time now, Radvanovsky has been partnered with the silver haired, Siberian born Hvorostovsky. Together, they’re a sort of Verdian “It Couple,” making the rounds of the world’s best opera and concert stages.
“He’s a real prankster, I must say,” said Radvanovsky of Hvorostovsky, recalling that in a previous production he’d blackened his teeth, and waited for just the right moment to give her a smile. Another time, he’d had the make-up artist paint a devil on his chest.
“He likes tickling me on stage, and trying to throw me off, but he doesn’t realize revenge is really not a good thing. And I have many a thing planned for him,” revealed Radvanovsky who promised such hi-jinx wouldn’t be done during the HD simulcast.
Hmm…we’ll see.
***
And speaking of hi-jinx, Spanish director Joan Font’s imaginative production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola, previously released on DVD with Juan Diego Florez and Joyce DiDonato, opened at the COC last Saturday.
The fine cast includes Lawrence Brownlee (Don Ramiro), a tenor with a less intense tone than Florez, and Liz DeShong (Cinderella), who has a darker, plummier tone compared to DiDonato. Donato DiStefano is a vibrant and mirthful Don Magnifico. Brett Polegato is a Dandini of note. Ileana Montalbetti (Clorinda) and Rihab Chaieb (Tisbe) sport Joan Guillén’s fanciful costumes that exaggerate female hips and bottoms. The cast and the virile COC Male Chorus are under the sure baton of Leonardo Vordoni.
For the Rossiniologists out there, Alidoro’s Là del ciel was included, and admirably sung by Kyle Ketelsen, but the Introductory Chorus of Act II and Clorinda’s aria Sventurata were both omitted, the latter agreeably so. Performances at the Four Seasons Centre, 145 Queen St. W., continue through May 25. Tickets: $70.06 - $317.53. Call 1-800-250-4653.
