NEW YORK (AP) — When tenor Xabier Anduaga first auditioned for Riccardo Frizza, the conductor recollects that “he opened his mouth, and after two notes I understood I was in front of something special. It’s one of the voices you find every 15 or 20 years.”
Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera’s normal supervisor, listened in astonishment when Anduaga made his home debut two season in the past: “I was quite frankly blown away by his sound.”
Anduaga has turn out to be a star all through Europe at age 30, when many tenors are simply beginning to make their mark.
Now, he has launched himself to American audiences in an enormous method, headlining the Met’s new manufacturing by Rolando Villazon of Bellini’s bel canto masterpiece “La Sonnambula,” which runs via Nov. 1.
Anduaga stars reverse soprano Nadine Sierra, with Frizza conducting. The Oct. 18 efficiency was broadcast stay in HD to film theaters all over the world.
To make certain, it’s an opera the place the soprano will get the final phrase — and in Sierra’s case a uncommon excessive F — however Anduaga holds his personal subsequent to her virtuosity.
“His tenor flows in endless legato, capable of thinning to a silken thread or blooming into ringing, plush fortissimos,” Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim wrote in her New York Occasions evaluation.
From boy soprano to star tenor
Anduaga grew up in San Sebastian, Spain, the place he began singing as a toddler.
“We have a big tradition of chorus and amateur music in the Basque Country,” Anduaga mentioned. He started as a boy soprano in church when he was 7, and at age 10 joined the Orfeón Donostiarra Choir, the place he first encountered Elena Barbé, who was the choir’s voice instructor.
As soon as his voice modified he started to review singing severely, however bumped into hassle on the conservatory when his lecturers needed him to review roles that had been too heavy for his gentle tenor voice on the time.
“After a month I was, I can’t sing anymore,” Anduaga mentioned. “I was pushing, not singing naturally.”
“So I called Elena — we were just friends at the time — and I said, ‘I need help!’ I restarted studying with her, and then eventually it became something different, and now we have a baby. We’ve been together 11 years.”
In 2016, when he was simply 21, he sang on the Rossini competition in Pesaro, Italy, whereas persevering with his research. Later that 12 months he was in school when he acquired an pressing name from the opera firm in Bilbao.
“It was Friday, and so they instructed me that they had a cancellation and wanted a tenor for Monday to sing Don Ramiro in Rossini’s ‘La Cenerentola,’” he recalled. “I known as Elena and instructed her I can’t do it. All I knew was one aria and a duet.
“She said, you have to. It’s a great opportunity. We have to study now. Say you’re sick and come home. She played the piano, and by Saturday morning I knew the whole role. She knows my potential better than I do.”
Texting her husband from the viewers
Via marriage and childbirth, Barbé has maintained her position as Anduaga’s coach, chief booster — and most discerning critic.
On a latest Friday evening earlier than a “Sonnambula” efficiency, the couple left 15-month-old Leonardo at their condo with a babysitter and got here to the Met collectively. Whereas he ready to go on, Barbé took a seat within the viewers and started discreetly texting her husband throughout the efficiency. Each time he left the stage he would test his cellphone to learn her feedback.
“She’ll point out little things, like, ‘Pay attention to your breathing’ or, ‘Look out at the audience more, not so much at the conductor and orchestra,’” he mentioned.
“She waits until there’s applause so she’s not disturbing her neighbor,” he mentioned. “Sometimes people are looking at her. She doesn’t want to tell them she’s the wife of the tenor.”
Increasing his repertoire
As Anduaga’s voice continues to develop, he mentioned, “it has gotten bigger and is taking on different colors.” Although he’s sticking with the bel canto favorites, he’s including some lighter Verdi roles and venturing into French repertory — Massenet’s “Werther” and Gounod’s “Faust” and “Romeo et Juliette.”
No matter his selection of roles, the individuals who run opera homes can’t get sufficient of him.
“In addition to singing like no one else, he dominates the stage and theatrical performance,” mentioned Joan Matabosch, creative director at Teatro Actual in Madrid. “He is, without a doubt, the tenor of the future.”
Actually, Anduaga’s recognition in Europe is such that the Met is having to attend in line.
“We have been actually having trouble booking him because he’s so much in demand,.” Gelb mentioned. Because it stands, Anduaga is subsequent as a result of sing on the Met within the 2028-29 season, in “Rigoletto” and “Romeo et Juliette.”
“Everybody’s always looking for the next Pavarotti,” Gelb mentioned. “I’m not saying he’s the next Pavarotti — but he could be.”
Anduaga dismisses that comparability.
“It’s too big,” he mentioned. “I don’t like ‘new this’ or ‘new that’. When you hear ‘Nessun dorma’ sung by Pavarotti, everyone knows it’s Pavarotti, all over the world, and this will never happen anymore.”
“I try to do my best,” he added. “So let’s just say, it’s me — I’m the new me.”
