“In an album recorded after his triumphant return to the Met at the start of the 2015 season, Dmitri Hvorostovsky offers his public a gallery of Russian operatic hero-portrayals exploring themes of War, peace, love and sorrow. Met audiences accorded him a triumphant welcome last fall, after his great return in Il Trovatore alongside his compatriot Anna Netrebko. A few weeks later, Dmitri Hvorostovsky recorded this recital of Russian opera scenes, confirming that, in this repertory so seldom undertaken by the great singers of the planet, the Russian baritone has absolutely no peer. The program, first of all, seems to be conceived as a call to opera house producers. Indeed, if Hvorostovsky has already distinguished himself in the role of Prince André in War and Peace, apparently no complete recording of this interpretation, alas, has appeared on the market. We are still waiting for him to tackle the role of Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa – or, as well, the character of Tomsky in The Queen of Spades. To date, Hvorostovsky is only renowned for the role, to an advantage more vocal than theatrical, of Prince Eletski. Undoubtedly this would also be the time to hope for a new complete recording of Anton Rubinstein’s The Demon: a role recently undertaken by Hvorostovsky, but only in a half-staged production. Even judging by the final duet heard here, the opera does not lack for boring interludes. If certain arias on this record have already been recorded by the great Russian baritone (Mazeppa, Iolanta) — it is with great pleasure that we again find his honeyed timbre intact; likewise his legendary, near-perfect legato and breath control, together with even greater expressive and emotional power. Along with the great baritone, we encounter others among the cream of contemporary Russian singing, most notably the soprano Asmik Grigorian, daughter of the recently-deceased tenor Gegam Grigorian. Constantly at the beck and call of his collaborator, the orchestral director Constantine Orbelian insures appropriate sonic textures for these carefully chosen scenes. We also get superb performances from the Academic State Symphony Orchestra of Russia, “Evgeny Svetlanov” » as well as from the Helikon Opera Chorus. Russia, decidedly, has an increasingly important role to play in the international lyrical panorama.” —Pierre Degott,
ResMusica (translation by Dennis Adams)
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