Jun 19, 2014

Vittorio Grigolo: The Romantic Hero (CD review)

Vittorio Grigolo, tenor; Evelino Pido, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI. Sony Classical 88883 76658 2.

Here is the next installment in a series of recordings by the Italian operatic tenor I've only recently heard of. That's still not saying much, however, because I know very little about the current state of things operatic. Whatever, The Romantic Hero is Vittorio Grigolo's fifth solo album, most of them devoted to short operatic selections rather than full-length operas. It doesn't seem to matter because audiences appear to love him, and maybe the brevity of the tunes appeals more to a mass audience.

Grigolo grew up in Rome and was singing by the time he was four. He was nine when he started doing his own version of "Ave Maria," at which point his father had him audition for the Sistine Chapel Choir. There, Gigolo become a soloist with the choir, also studying for several years at the Chapel's Schola Puerorum. By his early teens he was singing at Rome's opera house; and at eighteen he joined the Vienna Opera Company, by age twenty-three becoming the youngest man to perform in Milan's La Scala.

Today, Grigolo is in his mid thirties and apparently a heartthrob the world over. Or so people tell me. On the present album he sings heroic roles from French opera. Why French opera? As Grigolo explains, "The Italian way of singing is native to me. But sometimes in life we change course to follow a sign that is not the one of our birth; instead we go forward in the ascendant. The French hero is my ascendant. It's the hero that makes me feel alive when I am on stage." Fair enough.

The tenor sings twelve selections on the disc, accompanied by Evelino Pido and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, plus on several tracks by soprano Sonya Yoncheva and speaker Alessandra Martines. The numbers include "Toute mon ame...Pourquoi m reveiller" from Jules Massenet's Werther; "L'amour! L'amour!...Ah! leve-toi, soleil!" from Charles Gounod's Romeo et Juliette; "La fleur que tu m'avais jetee" from Georges Bizet's Carmen; "Quel trouble inconnu...Salut, demeure chaste et pure" from Gounod's Faust; "Instant charmant...En fermant les yeux" from Massenet's Manon; "Pays merveilleux...O paradis" from Giacomo Meyerbeer's L'Africaine; "Rachel, quand du Seigneur" from Jacques Fromental Halevy's La Juive; "Et moi? Moi, la fidele amie...O Dieus! de quelle ivresse" from Jacques Offenbach's Le Contes d'Hoffmann; "Va! Je t'ai pardonne...Nuit d'hymenee," again from Gounod's Romeo et Juliette; "Ah! tout est bien fini...O souverain, o juge, o pere" from Massenet's Le Cid; and "C'est la! Salut tombeau sombre et silencieux," yet again from Gounod's Romeo et Juliet.

Grigolo gets plenty of chances on the program to show off not only his power, tone, and control but his lyricism. That latter quality is probably the keynote of the present album, the selections carefully chosen to highlight the tenor's sweet intonation and well-judged inflections. In this regard, French opera seems perfectly suited to his voice, Italian or not.

For me, being but a fledgling in the field of opera, Grigolo's voice seems fine, although I thought at times there was a little more vibrato in it than I'm used to. Still, it adds to the lyric characteristics of most of the music. Otherwise, he floats the notes in fairly pure fashion, and when he needs to pour on the strength, there is plenty in reserve. The Faust selection demonstrates this ability to good effect, the hushed, quiet moments most telling. He hasn't perhaps the ability (yet) completely to thrill a listener and make one's hair stand on end the way a Domingo or Pavarotti have, but he does provide compensating dramatic skills that make his performances pleasurable.

The orchestra under the directorship of Maestro Pido does its best merely to stay out of Grigolo's way, and rightly so as this is his show from beginning to end. Soprano Sonya Yoncheva accompanies Grigolo on the "Instant charmant" and "Va! Je t'ai pardonne" tracks but, again, one hardly notices (although, to be fair, Ms. Yoncheva fares better in the second number).

Favorites? Everyone who listens to the disc will have favorites, and they will invariably be different. I enjoyed the Meyerbeer and Offenbach selections the most, but I am perhaps overly sentimental. They come through with a poignant spirit and moving grace.

One thing's for sure: Grigolo will not leave his fans disappointed with this album. There's enough romance to go around and enough force and conviction to reach almost any heart or mind.

Producer Chris Alder and engineer Douglas Ward recorded the songs at the Auditorium RAI "A. Toscanini," Torino, Italy in June and July, 2013. The voice is full and round, smoothly realistic, with very little shrillness or edginess except a trace in loudest passages. However, it is very close, up front, with the orchestra well behind. The orchestral sound is warm, slightly soft, and comfortable, often not even noticeable. The accompaniment, in fact, seems mostly perfunctory, the voice being the main thing here.

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:


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Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor

For nearly 30 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.

For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2024 Honda CRV Sport L Hybrid, I stream music from my phone through its adequate but hardly outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through a Roku Streambar Pro system (soundbar plus four surround speakers and a 10" sealed subwoofer) that has surprisingly nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence and reasonable price. Finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker and a pair of Google Pro Earbuds for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technologies that enable us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.

William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor

Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.

The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.

Ryan Ross, Contributor

I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.

I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.


Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst

I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.

Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio

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"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa