Recital de Sondra Radvanovsky ★★★★✩
Performers: Sondra Radvanovsky, soprano. Anthony Manoli, piano. Place and date: Gran Teatre del Liceu (18/XII/23)
Sondra Radvanovsky shone, confessed to the audience and opened her voice and feelings, who in her last recital at the Liceu was pure empathy.
The North American diva once again consummated her love story with the high school students, who said goodbye to her with a standing ovation. Sondra reviewed her professional singing life and demonstrated why, at fifty-four years old, she is at the zenith of her career.
Her performance in the baroque repertoire was approximate in style and vocally far from the stylistic canons, both in her Dido purcelliana and her Cleopatra händeliana, although as Sondra herself explained, she performed them because it was the first thing she sang at the beginning of her career. , first as a mezzo and then as a soprano.
Thus he presented a recital in which he explained who he is and why. With a narrative thread called by herself “From pain to love.” Pain from the loss of her mother, a little over two years ago; her love because he fell in love with the doctor who took care of her in her last days, suffering from dementia and Parkinson's.
The voice – the night before he sang Turandot at the San Carlo in Naples! – was roaring, explosive and with that characteristic metallic shine with which he displays prima donna assoluta harmonics. Not everyone will like its sharp timbre, its specific irregularities of style... but what piani, what legato and what control of the regulators for such a monumental instrument. Radvanovsky remains a marvel.
Her memory of her late friend Hvorostovsky, to whom she dedicated the three Rachmaninovs, is precious, since the Siberian baritone encouraged her to sing, as she said, the Russian repertoire, since he had the ideal voice.
And it is a pity that Richard Strauss does not sing more because, in the four lieder presented, the voice was imperial and dominating with some impressive Allerseelen and Befreit.
Anthony Manoli at the piano was elegant, stylistic and generous in expression.
In the second part, with some Tre sonettti di Petrarca, assumed with surprising care, an emotional If I Had Known by Jake Heggie, and a fiery “La mamma morta” by Giordano's Andrea Chénier, he closed a stylistic circle with which he confirmed that She is the current Diva of the Liceu, the most beloved.
