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Calleja Opera arias with Orchestra de Navarra and Chaslin


Orchestra de Navarra, opera arier m Joseph Calleja. Tenor. Conductor: Frédéric Chaslin.

Review by Henning Høholt

Joseph Calleja

PARIS: The world famous star tenor Joseph Calleja, presented a program with opera arias from his program, in the concert serie Les grandes voix, at Théâtre des Champs Élysées, Friday: 18. January. This is opening of a tour bringing this program to París, Munich, Praga, Viena, Amsterdam and Baden Baden.

That this concert became a success was, for me,  because of the wonderful Orchestra de Navarra and its brilliant ConductorFrédéric Chaslin. They together presented a very good musicality and enthusiasme in their playing, and, for me the orchestral numbers was the high lights
.

The program has good variations. It all started with a lively and very good Ouverture from Edouard Lalo´s Le Roi d´Ys. That I unfortunately not is familiar with. Excellent. Showed an orchestra well prepared for the evening

“Cielo e Mar!”, Enzos famouse aria from La Gioconda by Amilcare Ponchielli. With pleasure i noticed a beautiful cello solo by Herwig Coryn (?) This was followed by two numbers from Carmen by Georges Bizet

. From Suite no 1. Les Toreadors, – that will say Escamillios baryton aria where in stead of the baryton soloist a solotrumpet plays the solo part, Excellent Trumpetsolo: Carlos Gomis (?). This was followed by Don José´s flower aria “La fleur que tu m´avais jetée“. A good english hornplyed  by Iker Nausia (?)

Then works by Giacomo Puccini, La Tregenda  from Le Villi interestingfunctioning  as an ouverture in this case, not often heard, and so erly in Puccinis carriere, so it is not typically Puccini. Good brass part
. This was followed by the two tenor highlights from Tosca “Recondita armonia” from first act and  “E lucevan le stelle” Cavaradossis last aria.

After the break it continued with Giuseppe Verdis ouverture to Sicilian Vesper. and “La donna è mobile”, the Dukes aria from Rigoletto. Then followed from followed from Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni, Turidus arie “Mamma, quel vino è generoso”. This piece was for me the worst in the concert. I feel this is not mr. Calleja´s role.

It all ended with three pieces by Jules Massenet
. First from Thaïs, the beautiful Méditation with soloviolin and harp, beautiful played by the concertmaster Vicont Balaguer and the great harpist Maria Chiosi, which unfortunately was completely forgotten by the conductor in the applause. The audience commented that after the concert!!!

From Werther “Pourquoi me réveiller” and from Le Cid, Rodrigues aria: “Ah! Tout est bien fini… Ô souverain, ô juge, ô père”.

Joseph Calleja has a beautiful tenor voice with a spesial sound, remarkable beautiful for his sound. To me it sounds that it comes from a very fast vibrato, But unfortunately the audience was not 100% happy and enthusiastic, it was not really amazing. It seems that he has intonation problem. Furthermore I am missing atmosphaere in his presentation and he is, for me, lacking charisma. During the evening, until Mr. Calleja started with his 4!  encores, the temperature was not very hot in the concerthall, When the 4 encores started, with “Nessun Dorma” from Turandot, people (of course) was screaming, his first encore, which was good, but not extraordinary. That extra was the best together with the great Mario Lanza his Be my Love., which was encore no 3 after a beautiful sung by Tosti. During the last month, when I have attended several opera concerts I have heard tenors singing Nessun Dorma better.   As last encore he repeated  “E lucevan le stelle” Cavaradossis last aria from Tosca

As mentioned I was mostly impressed by the excellent Orchestra de Navarra , with a special strong brass group. All leaded by Frédéric Chaslin. – BRAVO.

This Paris concert is the first in a tourne, bringing this program to París, Munich, Praga, Viena, Amsterdam and Baden Baden during the following dates:
18 January 2013
21 January 2013
24 January 2013
28 January 2013
31 January 2013
3 February 2013.
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