After Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez, this time Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu was invited to festively open the concert season of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra in the Queen Elisabeth Hall. And she did not come alone.
Gheorghiu brought along a fellow compatriot: tenor Teodor Ilincai who not only performed several duets with her but also appeared as a soloist. This made it possible to present a full evening programme without the diva having to exert herself too much! Of course there were also some purely orchestral pieces for the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Romanian conductor Ciprian Teodorascu.
They opened the concert with the waltz from Faust by Gounod, Bizet was represented with the Aragonaise from the Carmen suite, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky with the Polonaise from Eugene Onegin and from Cavalleria Rusticana by Mascagni we heard the Intermezzo. Four popular pieces performed with verve, brilliance and passion. All other opera excerpts came from Italian operas by Cilea, Leoncavallo, Puccini, Giordano and Catalani, with the exception of Bizet's Carmen and finally there was the piece Muzica by George Grigoriu (not explained in the programme booklet).
Angela Gheorghiu began her performance with the aria Io son l'umile ancella from Adriana Lecouvreur, an opera that she still regularly performs on stage and in which she embodies the great French tragedienne, a role that seems tailor-made for her. There followed a duet from the same opera in which Teodor Ilincai gave voice to her passionate lover. They later also sang the final duet from Andrea Chénier by Giordano, an opera which, as far as I know, Gheorghiu has never performed on stage to date. That probably explains why she needed a score for this excerpt.
Dressed alternately in a wide black and red dress, her hair first pinned up, then loose on her shoulders, Angela Gheorghiu took to and left the stage with careful small steps, then greeted her audience with broad arm movements and sent her voice into the hall in a carefully selected repertoire. That voice has lost some of its colour and substance over the years, especially in the middle and lower register, but the top notes are still delivered with unfailing accuracy and Angela Gheorghiu can interpret. She demonstrated this, among other things, in the tender and beautifully nuanced In quelle trine morbide from Puccini's Manon Lescaut. That aria was preceded by Carmen's L'amour est un oiseau rebelle, a somewhat unexpected but reasonably safe choice. From Madama Butterfly, an opera that Angela Gheorghiu recorded on cd but never wanted to sing on stage, we heard an expressive Un bel di vedremo and from Catalani's rarely performed opera La Wally she performed the famous Ebben? Ne andro lontano. In between, Teodor Ilincai, a singer who has already been heard at the Munt, sang arias from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, Puccini's Tosca and Turandot and Giordano's Andrea Chénier with a sturdy but not particularly supple tenor that was more than once put under pressure.
Great success for everyone in a packed hall, flowers, lots of arm-waving and several encores. The next opening gala is scheduled for 19 September 2019 with….? The name will be announced later.
- WHAT: opening concert season Antwerp Symphony Orchestra
- WHO: Angela Gheorghiu (soprano) and Teodor Ilincai (tenor) Antwerp Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ciprian Teodorascu
- WHERE & WHEN: Queen Elisabeth Hall, Antwerpen 22 September 2018
- PHOTOS: © Petrica-Tanase, © Marius Baragan, © Antwerp Symphony Orchestra