Viva Villazón (incl. bonus DVD)

Villazon is my favorite tenor, past or present. This CD is a great compilation of tracks from his previous recordings. However, the version being released in Europe next week (11/12/07) includes 2 CDs plus DVD for just a few dollars more, so you're better off ordering from amazon.co.uk or another UK retailer.

Viva Villazón (incl. bonus DVD)

Although this is a collection of the "Best of Villazon" it highlights the quality of this young and very passionate singer. His ability to sing various styles only contributes to the sensation. The CD is packaged with a DVD of a live concert from Prague. This DVD alone is worth the price of the CD. It is clear that audiences love his style and his stage presence. Villazon's artistry encompasses passion, style and humility. His sharing of flowers with members of orchestra is a sign of his debt of gratitude in delivering a quality performance.

Of course much has been written about the combination of Villazon & Netrebko leading many to call this today's operatic dream team. His duets with the Russian DIVA are breathtaking in their musicality and passion. Only can only hope that Rolando will soon return to the stage.

What is mainly "new" in this release, as has been pointed out, is the DVD of a recent Prague concert featuring Villazon singing to the audience's delight a very generous selection of arias and even multiple encores. Though he possesses an undeniably beautiful tenor voice (4 stars), Villazon seems to have here, no matter what he's singing, just one mood, ranging from the unhappy to the sorely beset. And, in my view, this makes for an ultimately tiresome monotony. If you've heard him all, in other words, you've heard him one.

In this vocal sameness, he reflects, perhaps, the influence of his presumed mentor, the far greater and more experienced Placido Domingo, whose singing, if it has a flaw, is the presence of a similar generic quality, despite a burnished beauty of tone, that infects whatever he performs. My point is not that great voices shouldn't be instantly recognizable. Rather, they should have sufficient variety appropriate to the dramatic characters whose arias they're singing. For masters in this regard, one has only to listen, say, to Pertile or Callas.

Mostly to his credit, Villazon here shows us that, like a good politician, he certainly knows how to work a room, for he includes to the further delight of the audience a short, memorized speech in the local language and some hanky panky with the pretty ladies in the orchestra to whom he delivers flowers from his own bouquets. Initially this is funny, but even here, he begins to repeat himself unnecessarily, growing again tiresome, and now even clownish in his antics. As one commentator said a while back about Villazon's stage manner, the tenor could benefit greatly from a director who'd order him as follows: "Don't do anything; just stand there."

Rolando Villazon, the superb Mexican tenor, (who is reportedly ill and who has cancelled all performances for the next four months) has a new CD...that is really not new at all...as it is really composed of arias released previously on his albums of Italian arias, French arias and the zarzuela album with Placido Domingo conducting. The only new piece is his aria from Puccini's Manon Lescout, "Donna non vidi mai," beautifully sung but never before released. The CD consists of arias by Puccini, Gounod, Donizetti, Verdi, Massenet, Tchaikovsky, Cilea, Bizet, Monteverdi and Sorozabal - all brilliantly performed by this magnificent tenor. But the real UNALLOYED JOY of this item is the bonus DVD...a 51 minute concert, filmed in Prague, on November 11, 2005. Maestro Villazon, in brilliant voice, performs before this staid audience in the Czech Republic, and charms, cajoles, and emotionally moves the audience to their feet...proving that this is not merely a great voice but a warm, gracious and heroic human being as well. It is quite a display! Villazon passionately performs excerpts from Donizetti's Il Duco d'Alba, Verdi's La Traviata, Un Ballo in Maschera and I Lombardi, Massenet's Le Cid, Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticano, Giordano's Fedora as well as Rossini's "La Danza" and Sorozabal's "No Puede Ser". He had the audience eating out of his hands as, I'm sure, he will with everyone who views this performance. This is a TRULY EXCEPTIONAL artist and one can only hope that he will recover quickly from whatever ails him. May all he has given to his audiences return to him ten fold.