There are so many good girls

Concerts of the series “Hvorostovsky and Friends” took place in Moscow

It is difficult to surprise Moscow, always striving for acute sensations and novelty of experiences, with something twice, much less three or four times, but Dmitry Hvorostovsky, who appears in the capital with enviable regularity, succeeds every time. Becoming more respectable every year and at the same time closer to the people, the golden baritone of Russia very timely sensed the moment when his single appearances on stage began to turn from a holiday into everyday life, and made a brilliant strategic move by organizing a series of concerts “Hvorostovsky and Friends ", in which he appears in a paired performance with his colleagues from the opera workshop. First it was the luxurious American Renee Fleming, then the sparkling Korean Sumi Yo, now he has returned with two girls at once - one of them, Sondra Radvanovsky, made her debut in Moscow, and the other, the already mentioned Renee Fleming, came to consolidate her success. Hvorostovsky rightly considered the second to be already quite accomplished, so as to give her carte blanche for a solo evening, with the first he teamed up in a duet program.

Evil tongues have been gossiping that Radvanovsky, rapidly moving to operatic heights thanks to her beautiful, dense Verdi soprano, is in fact a replacement for the Romanian Angela Gheorghiu, previously announced in the same concert, who even managed to appear on several posters along with the gray-haired baritone, until she was carefully brought there inserted an image of Radvanovsky. One way or another, the status of the American debutante turned out to be quite impressive enough to immediately reject talk of a replacement - having appeared on the stage of the Great Hall of the Conservatory for the first time in Elvira's Cavatina from Verdi's Ernani, Radvanovsky confidently ordered herself to be listened to. Her voice, voluminous, with a dark shimmering timbre and tremulous vibration, is truly an ideal instrument for the restless heroines of Verdi and Puccini, and this is probably why the singer is now in great demand at all the largest opera houses - such strong voices are offensively rare. However, either due to youth, or because of excitement, this sound scale periodically somewhat disturbed the owner of the voice, breaking the transparent beauty of Elena’s rondo from Verdi’s “Sicilian Vespers”, where the coloratura passages were not very successful, and slightly tiring with the tense highs in the duet of Amelia and Renato from Un ballo in maschera. In addition, Hvorostovsky, compared to his partner, sounded too intimate and even dull - in duets the difference in the volume of the voice became especially noticeable, and neither the actor’s spectacular gestures helped (Radvanovsky periodically fell to her knees in front of Hvorostovsky, he once reciprocated her feelings), nor improvised mise-en-scène. It turned out that the friendship stated in the title of the project is not very well realized on stage.

You can be friends at a distance - and this was perfectly proven by Renee Fleming, who with honor held a solo program in the absence of Hvorostovsky in the Svetlanov Hall of the House of Music. The magical beauty of Fleming's voice, praised in Russia from recordings but not yet tested live, turned out to be only one of the many components of her phenomenal success. Others are impeccable taste, manifested in everything from stylish stage costumes and strict stage manners to program design, refined acting technique, skillful influence on the public and irresistible feminine charm. Fleming demonstrated all this in full within the framework of a compact two-hour program, ignoring the watery soundtrack of the Svetlanov Hall and the formally indifferent playing of the Russian Chamber Orchestra, which did not impress with perfection either that evening or when it accompanied Radvanovsky and Hvorostovsky. Of course, one can argue about how strong the voice for an American diva is for the role of Manon in Puccini’s opera, and whether the other Manon, this time from Massenet’s opera, is too lightweight for her, but any image she embodies in one way or another becomes a work of art with its unique intonation. Having finally gone beyond the boundaries of her repertoire in the second part (which other Western singer can be imagined singing Natasha’s arioso from Tchaikovsky’s “The Oprichnik” or Rachmaninov’s romance “Don’t sing, beauty, in front of me”?!), at the end of the evening Fleming amazed with two Puccini hits ( Lauretta's aria from "Gianni Schicchi" and Visse d'arte from "Tosca"), and then for an encore she began to flirt with the audience to hits from American musicals - and it looked as natural and uncontrived as in the case of Puccini or Tchaikovsky . She, perhaps the only one of all Hvorostovsky’s partners in his Moscow projects, managed to overcome their specific commercial format and turn the event for the bored Rublevsky nobility into a truly musical experience. The producer (and part-time conductor) of the series “Hvorostovsky and friends” Konstantin Orbelyan made the fairy tale come true - such absurdly high ticket prices as for his projects cannot be found anywhere else (and this is in the presence of powerful sponsors!); To an uninformed person it may seem that the organizers are in dire need of money and need financial assistance. But while sums of 20 and 30 thousand rubles inspire a large army of Moscow music lovers-free riders to bypass any barriers and enter concerts in the most unimaginable ways, you don’t have to worry about the fate of Dmitry Hvorostovsky and his friends - those people who will appreciate the real thing will always come to the hall vocals

Mikhail FIKHTENGOLTS