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line-height: 150%;">On 20^th January, 2014 the latest album of the Mexican tenor, Rolando Villazon, is going to be released on the international level with arias from Mozart – and, on the same day you will have the opportunity to listen to it for the first time on Radio Romania Music. It is an album also included in the "Vote for the best classical record album of 2014" campaign on the website: www.romaniamuzical.ro

We are dealing with an exquisite album which brings to light concert arias from Mozart’s compositions, for tenor and orchestra, which are presented only sporadically in the concert programmes and almost never recorded in albums.

A Pappano -Villazon Conversation

Hereinafter the video trailer of this album is showed, an album released by Deutsche Grammophon – and you can listen to the conversation between Rolando Villazon and Antonio Pappano which begins like this:

Pappano: I think that it was your idea to record these works…I think there is only one album that was recorded before our own, namely, the one comprising the complete concerto arias by Mozart.

Villazon: Yes, and it isn’t available anymore. The idea came to me while I was in a shop in Munich and as I was in search for the Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte scores, I discovered the score of these concert arias. I took a look through them and I said to myself "This is it".

This year I want to play as much as I can from Mozart’s music; I have just fallen in love with this composer, and as we all know, playing Mozart is one of the hardest things to do. People tell me sometimes: Mozart has no acutes. What? I say to myself. He has a lot of acutes, but the nice thing is that he isn’t writing the acutes as we are accustomed to, he doesn’t stand out by it. For him the acutes come from an inner need for the musical construction, you have to get through with them in order to carry further the melody in legato. The aria that we recorded, Va dal furor portata, gave us the opportunity to compare the very young Mozart to the mature Mozart and to notice his cultivation which happened meanwhile.

Pappano: I think that one of this recording session’s delights was to hear Rolando enjoying the comic arias; you have such a comic sense, and there are some arias that allow you to express this feature of your character, as well.

Villazon: I suppose Mozart was a great harlequin, and I’m saying this with my all respect – because I believe that to tell somebody he is an harlequin is a compliment, and this is because a real harlequin makes you laugh, and, more than that, he makes you dream, he is full of poetry; a real harlequin can make you be in contact with the sublime. It is amazing to play this music: you are suddenly in heaven. 

The album, in its limited edition, has also an extra album with arias from Cosi fan tutte and Don Giovanni - works which was released in the past years by Deutsche Grammophon, Rolando Villazon’s collaboration with the conductor Yannick Nezet Seguin.

Villazon – the Mozart player

Mozart is for certain one of the major concerns of the Mexican tenor who returned to the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 2013, after he had been operated on his vocal chords in 2009. In January 2014, he has four performances with Don Giovanni scheduled at the Vienna State Opera; he  is going to perform concerts with  arias from Mozart’s operas in Prague, Munich, Vienna, Paris, London and Berlin, and in June 2014, he  is going to perform five performances with Cosi fan tutte at Il Teatro Alla Scala Milano.

The previous arias album of the tenor Rolando Villazon - which is dedicated to Verdi’s work was awarded with an Echo prize in 2013. I think that the present album is going to be well off for the same success, because this tenor’s voice, one of the most contemporary important tenors, is in tune with Mozart’s music; and Villazon is an intelligent musician and a very melodious one, decisive attributes to help perform Mozart’s works well.

I admit that it is impossible for me to dissociate this album from a book which I read some time ago before listening to this album: Mozart Wakes up by Eva Baronsky, a story about Mozart who rises from the dead after 200 years. The same character for whom music is everything, ingenuous, with little preoccupation for life’s practical aspects, having the same amazing charisma, with a performing and composing ingenuity; and this album of Rolando Villazon makes me believe that a new-born Mozart would have appreciated the Mexican’s tenor interpretation.