Newsday, October 2004

"That's no lady; that's my wife." So goes the ancient punch line, a musical variation upon which might be, "That's no musician; that's a tenor." For most of his U.S. debut recital, tenor Rolando Villazón gave the lie to that shibboleth.

Villazón, 32, bowed at the Metropolitan Opera last season as Alfredo in Verdi's La traviata. A well-mannered artist, he nonetheless gave a performance of such vocal panache, dramatic crackle and utter, irrepressible charisma that he upstaged his formidable leading ladies, Ruth Ann Swenson and Renée Fleming. Villazón's 2004 Virgin CD, "Italian Opera Arias," is one of the finest such recordings in many years.

The Mexican tenor is known among vocal fanciers as a "piccolo Domingo," and for good reason. His compact, chocolate-brown tone—"baritonale," as Italians would say—sounds uncannily like the young Plácido Domingo's. And like the elder tenor, Villazón brings to his assignments not only a gorgeous voice, but also intelligence, refined fire and mostly scrupulous musicianship.

Those qualities came to the fore in the "arie antiche" that opened his Metropolitan Museum of Art program. To Handel's "Ombra mai fu," Villazón brought a poised, beautifully tapered legato line, and he flew nimbly through the intricate ornaments and intervals of Bononcini's "Per la gloria d'adorarvi," bathing the second verse in hushed, emotion-drenched tone.

Liszt's Petrarch Sonnets were a mixed bag, mostly because hearing Petrarch's verse in Liszt's flowery settings is like seeing a Giotto fresco tarted up with tinsel. Still, Villazón sang this gaudy music with sensitivity, striking a quintessentially Petrarchan note of rapt ardor in the closing tercets of "I' vidi in terra." Here and elsewhere, Bryndon Hassman's accompaniments were exemplary, though muddied by the dismal acoustics of the museum's Temple of Dendur.

Strauss songs are often the province of hooty, affected sopranos, so the chance to hear them sung by an elegant tenor was especially welcome. Villazón's interpretations were full of memorable touches, as in "Allerseelen": a dreamy head voice for "süssen Blicke" ("sweet glances"), and a final phrase dark and aching with loss.

Villazón's set of Mexican songs was of another order of magic altogether. "Very schlocky," my companion whispered after the final crooned note of Maria Grever's "Te quiero dijiste." Myself, I found that Villazón in his native tongue sometimes approached that exalted level of vocal art where song and conversation become one, as in the greatest recordings of Frank Sinatra or Tito Schipa, an early 20th-century paragon of musical grace. The world needs more such schlock.

Wobbly-knee moments came fast and furious in songs by Fauré and Massenet: the airy intervals of "Après un rêve," the sensuously molded descending phrases of "Elégie," the caressing tone with which Villazón stirred his lover in "Ouvre tes yeux bleus."

Only in a final Tosti group and encores by Cilea, Sorozábal and Giordano did the tenor win out over the musician, with Villazón at times coming close to flinging his voice at the music. Nonetheless, exuberance and coltish energy are part and parcel of Villazón's greatness, and a more glorious, promising debut can hardly be imagined.

ROLANDO VILLAZÓN, tenor. Bryndon Hassman, piano. Attended Monday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Temple of Dendur.