This year we have lost two Italian tenors: Vincenza La Scola died from a heart-attack aged 53 in April, and Salvatore Licitra died last week at 43. Vittorio Grigolo is 34 but has a dangerous hobby: he loves big motorbikes. But danger is a turn on for him, as The Observer’s Peter Conrad found out.
We live in pressure. Opera is just like tennis or boxing or Formula 1. The critics moan that Federer’s backhand is no good any more or that Nadal is too muscly, but do they know how to put the ball up there and really serve it? It is the same for tenors with the high C. If we fuck up that note in La Bohème, we lose the whole opera. It is a dangerous profession, that is why people are so excited to hear us.”
… Grigolo says that his sound has a certain “solarità” or sunniness, combining heat and light. “It is the Italian way of singing, it is our passion. The instrument is elastic, and we are elastic people – loose, easy, we rely on instinct. Yet we are extreme, and sometimes for us life is miserable. Think of the poor Licitra!”
Less than a week ago Salvatore Licitra – another tenor prematurely hailed as Pavarotti’s heir – had died at the age of 43 after crashing his motor scooter near Catania.
Briefly woebegone, Grigolo recalled Caruso, the most beloved of his predecessors, the subject of a song on his CD Arriverderci, to be released next March. In it the legendary tenor, returning to Naples from triumphs in America, mopes on a hotel balcony overlooking the sea and meditates about the painted smile on the face of the suffering clown, that archetypal operatic hero.
“In Italy we have what we call esterofilia,” said Grigolo: the word translates as xenophilia, a preference for the foreign over the homegrown. “Caruso felt rejected when he came back. We singers must all be loved by the public! In the song he says that all of life is just a mise-en-scèné, like opera. I often think that way, when I look in the mirror and take off the make-up.”
read all via The Observer
