“Finally in Bologna, a spectacular city”

One of the greatest contemporary baritones and some of the most loved lyrical pages. The Frenchman Ludovic Tézier returns to Bologna today, where he actually makes his live debut with the Orchestra del Comunale, in the Gala Straordinario Opera in concert, for the Symphonic Season. The appointment with operatic scenes ranging from Giuseppe Verdi, Umberto Giordano, Georges Bizet, Giacomo Puccini, Amilcare Ponchielli to Ruggero Leoncavallo, is tonight at 8.30pm at the Manzoni Auditorium. On the podium Daniel Oren, after the performances of Verdi’s Macbeth just concluded at the Nouveau.

Tonight Tézier reunites with the Municipal Orchestra after having already recorded a Verdi album together released in 2021. “We were in a pandemic – he remembers – and after the rehearsals I went straight back to the hotel. This time however I managed to visit this beautiful, spectacular city”. And she is linked to Verdi, of whom the baritone is considered one of the greatest interpreters and who obviously falls into the program with Rigoletto Cortigiani’s aria, vil racial dannata. “It’s always familiar to me – considers the baritone –. Singing it is a question of health for my voice.” Guest of prestigious theaters, from the Metropolitan in New York to the Opéra in Paris, from the Royal Opera House in London to the Staatsoper in Vienna, from La Scala to the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Tézier sang in recent days at the San Carlo in Naples in Ponchielli’s Gioconda , a work of which he will propose Barnaba Pescator’s Barcarola to Manzoni, sinks the bait.

“We chose the songs with Oren – he explains – and it turned out to be an exciting program, with a beautiful choir. We hadn’t met for a long time and when he invited me I told him I would also come on foot. Personally I love singing Andrea Chénier (the monologue by Carlo Gérard Enemy of the Fatherland, ed.) and the Te Deum from Tosca. All songs chosen with great love and passion”. Among the artist’s strong points you can also listen to Carlo Gérard’s monologue Nemico della patria from Giordano’s Andrea Chénier and Escamillo Toreador’s aria from Bizet’s Carmen. He instead belongs to a less well-known work, Zazà by Leoncavallo, the romance by Cascart Zazà, little Gypsy, brought into vogue by baritones of the past such as Titta Ruffo. The Comunale choir, instructed by Gea Garatti Ansini, is also involved in Patria oppressa from Verdi’s Macbeth and in Regina Coeli from Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni. It ends with the Prologue from Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, the Overtures from Verdi’s Nabucco and Bizet’s Carmen, and the Intermezzo from Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana.

the. gam.