News so, so...

Contrariamente ao entusiasmo de muitos melómanos, não creio que, nem o Boccanegra de Domingo, nem a Floria Tosca de Mattila, constituam interpretações de referência. Contudo, aqui estão os testemunhos das prestações dos dois monstros, cujo visionamento tirará a prova dos 9.

Simon Domingo?

(Plácido Domingo, como protagonista de Simon Boccanegra - Met Opera House)

«On Monday, three days before turning 69, Mr. Domingo returned to his vocal roots. For the first time at the Metropolitan Opera he sang a baritone role, the title character in Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra.” Some of his tougher critics would say that Mr. Domingo has been a quasi baritone for years, since he has increasingly asked conductors to transpose parts of the tenor roles he sings down a step or two.

But he sounded liberated as Boccanegra, a tormented doge in 14th-century Genoa. At times his voice had a worn cast. And when he dipped into the lower baritone register, he had to fortify his sound with chesty, sometimes leathery power. Still, this was some of his freshest singing in years.

Maybe taking on Boccanegra is a self-indulgent exercise for Mr. Domingo at this stage of his career. I almost hesitate to praise him, since I do not want him to get ideas. Right now the two companies he is running — the Los Angeles Opera and the Washington National Opera — are struggling financially. So he has big responsibilities.

That said, he earned an enormous ovation on Monday night. Over the last decade, when a role took him to the upper register of his tenor voice, he often sounded cautious and calculating. But as Boccanegra, he could not wait, it seemed, for the line to soar into the baritone’s high register, now his comfort zone.

Yet that auditioning committee of 1959 was right: Mr. Domingo was a tenor. Whether a singer is a tenor or a baritone is not just a matter of range. The coloring and character of a voice also identifies its type. There have long been dusky, baritonal qualities to Mr. Domingo’s singing, but the overall colorings and ping in his sound were those of a tenor.

Inevitably, he made Boccanegra seem like a tenor role. The long scene in which Boccanegra discovers that Maria, who goes by the name Amelia Grimaldi (don’t ask), is his long-lost illegitimate daughter, did not have the contrast of baritone and soprano colorings that Verdi intended. Still, Mr. Domingo brought vocal charisma, dramatic dignity and a lifetime of experience to his portrayal. Purists will complain, but Mr. Domingo’s performance was an intriguing experiment.»

Muito se tem escrito sobre a derradeira interpretação operática de Plácido Domingo. O mor das vezes, a crítica aclama o seu Simon, plenamente baritonal. É a primeira crítica - a que acima reproduzo - a questionar, sem embandeirar em arco, a incarnação de Domingo.

Prudência, prudência e reservas...

Simon Domingo

(Domingo e Harteros, em Simon Boccanegra)

«El tenor español Plácido Domingo consiguió anoche poner en pie al público de la Staatsoper berlinesa con su interpretación del atormentado Simón Boccanegra, el primer papel de su carrera operística en el que canta como barítono en una ópera.

Bajo la batuta del director argentino-israelí, Daniel Barenboim, el tenor español cumple así con su sueño de interpretar al corsario de la obra de Giuseppe Verdi, para el que no ha dudado en cambiar su registro. El público de la ópera de Unter den Linden reconoció los esfuerzos y el virtuosismo del español en el estreno con una acalorada despedida y con aplausos esporádicos que arrancaron con su primera aparición sobre el escenario y se fueron repitiendo durante las más de tres horas de espectáculo.

La melodramática obra de Verdi, de tintes shakespearianos, aúna muertes, traiciones, celos y reencuentros familiares orquestados alrededor de la figura de Boccanegra, quien por aclamación popular e intrigas palaciegas pasa de corsario a gobernante de la ciudad italiana.

El Simon Boccanegra de Domingo se representará en Berlín en varios días de octubre, noviembre y marzo y viajará posteriormente a la Scala de Milán, en abril y mayo.»

O tenor Domingo - outrora barítono - regressa ao seu registo original, como prometera. Aos 70 anos, glorioso, interpreta o protagonista baritonal Simon Boccanegra, da ópera homónima de Verdi.

A vida não cessa de (re)começar, no caso de Domingo...

ps assisti, há uns bons dez anos, a um magistral Parsifal interpretado pelo grande, grande Plácido. Há experiências duplamente místicas...