A little over a year after handsome Vittorio Grigolo turned heads and hearts with his first album, The Italian Tenor, he brings us Arrivederci. Recorded earlier this year in halls that complement the timbre of an instrument that by some accounts was more than one size too small for the barn known as the Metropolitan Opera House, the disc, whose booklet thankfully includes texts and English translations, mixes eight mostly familiar arias with twelve Italian and Neapolitan songs. It also lets us hear how the 31-year-old tenor’s god given instrument has naturally darkened on top while retaining its beauty.
In reviewing Grigolo's last outing on CD, I sounded a note of caution about "an occasional over-slathering of sentiment." The tendency to lay it on thick remains, most certainly in the recital’s first two selections, a less familiar aria from Donizetti and Salvi’s Il Duca d’Alba, and the beloved “La donna é mobile” from Verdi’s Rigoletto.
Listen To The Music
Vittorio Grigolo: Core N'gratoVittorio Grigolo: Amor Ti Vieta (From Fedora)
Mystery Tenor: Amor Ti Vieta (From Fedora)
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Amidst all the passion emerges a dismaying descent into singsong interpretation. How much of this is due to the conducting of Pier Giorgio Morandi, whose Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Parma also accompanied the first album, cannot be ascertained without hearing Grigolo with an artist with the sensibilities of a Claudio Abbado, Antonio Pappano, or Nicola Luisotti. Whatever the reason(s), Grigolo’s first Mozart recording, “Un’aura amorosa” from Così fan tutte; Giordano’s glorious “Amor ti vieta” from Fedora; and Rossini’s familiar “La danza” from Soirées musicales suffer less from rapid, mostly even tempos than a tendency to break phrases into sequences of “la, la, la” equivalents.
There’s no question of the sincerity behind everything that Grigolo does. But, if I may include for comparison a performance of “Amor ti vieta” by a tenor who was just three years older than Grigolo at the time he entered the studio, these arias contain far more soaring passion and, in the case of Mozart, refined elegance than Grigolo lets us hear.
Some performances are far more successful, most certainly Cardillo’s “Core ‘ngrato” and d’Anzi’s “Voglio vivere così.” But the title track, Rascel’s “Arrivederci, Roma,” again presents an interpretive conundrum. Grigolo clearly loves this tuneful promise to return to the beauties of Rome, yet he sings the opening stanza as though it were a final farewell to the one and only love of his life. It’s not. It calls for a lightening up of tone and timbre that Grigolo does not provide.
What we do hear loud and clear in the rendition of Lucio Dalla’s “Caruso” is Grigolo’s crossover background. The tenor phrases the opening of the most recently composed item on the disc — Dalla was born in 1943 — almost as if it were a pop song.
Vocally and emotionally, Vittorio Grigolo has so much to offer. I won’t be surprised if many opera lovers go wild over this disc. Others, however, will hope for a different conductor and a lot more coaching.