Ștefan Pop – Verdi Arias
When Giuseppe Verdi (1813 - 1901) started working on the opera Nabucco in the early 1840s, it was hard to foresee a promising career that would make him the most successful opera composer of all time. On the contrary: Verdi was already around 30 years old when he celebrated his breakthrough at Milan's La Scala with Nabucco; his private life had been hit hard by misfortune and he was on the verge of letting his composing pen disappear into his desk drawer forever, due to a lack of success. Fortunately, he did not do so and became Italy's best-known and most popular opera composer.
The powerful Romanian tenor Ștefan Pop opens this recording with "Questa o quella", and his subtle, penetrating and technically excellent voice is also evident in the other arias, which are imbued with passion.
The carefully curated collection of arias on this CD provides a musical cross-section of Verdi's compositional sophistication. Together with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille under the direction of Da-Min Kim, Ștefan Pop succeeds in impressively depicting the artistic maturation process of Verdi's middle creative phase in particular.
Verdi: Rigoletto: "Questa o quella"; "Ella mi fu rapita… Parmi veder le lagrime"; "La donna è mobile"; Luisa Miller: "Oh! fede negar potessi... Quando le sere al placido"; La Traviata: "Lunge da lei... De’ miei bollenti spiriti"; "Cabaletta: O mio rimorso"; Il Trovatore: "Ah! sì, ben mio"; Un ballo in maschera: "Di' tu se fedele"; "Forse la soglia attinse... Ma se m'è forza perderti"; Macbeth: "O figli miei... Ah, la paterna mano"; Don Carlo: "Io l'ho perduta"; Simon Boccanegra: "O inferno... Sento avvampar... Cielo pietoso, rendila"; I due Foscari: "Ah sì, ch'io sento ancora... Dal più remoto esilio... Odio solo, ed odio atroce"; "Notte, perpetua notte"; Attila: "Che non avrebbe il misero"; I Lombardi": "La mia letizia infondere"