Friday,
September 22, 2006
Ferruccio Furlanetto: A Deep-Thinking Bass that went from Mozart to
Verdi
The
ANNOTICO Report
Ferruccio Furlanetto was born in
1949 in Friuli, a relatively isolated region of
Furlanetto was a natural singer who, he said, had
"a tiny tenor voice" as a kid. "I remember my great-grandfather
teaching me arias. I loved to sing. It didn't matter if it was opera, pop or
whatever. In the second half of the '60s, with the incredible explosion in pop
music, of course I had a group. I had a guitar. My voice at that time was
already a dark voice."
For
the first 15 years of his career, he sang mostly Mozart. "Mozart gave me
everything, opened all the doors," he said.
"When
I was in my early 30s, Figaro was pure happiness," he said. "It was
joy because the character of Figaro was very much linked to that moment in my
life. Giovanni, I still do. Figaro, Leporello" Don Giovanni's long-suffering valet "are quite physical, and you should
be a young man in your 30s or 40s to do them. "Now
when I do Leporello in concert, it's better than ever
vocally. But while I still jump around, instead of pure happiness, sometimes
it's fatigue."
"I then started with Verdi, the deep Verdi, because I felt that it was the
moment to find again that kind of happiness," he said. "And I
realized it was in the big Verdi roles."
The
third act of "Don Carlo" is the one that has most likely raised the
hair on the backs of the audiences necks. It's special
for Furlanetto too.
The
act begins with Philip's agonizing lament that his young wife, Elisabeth,
doesn't love him; proceeds to the king's duet with the dreaded Grand
Inquisitor, where the struggle between church and state reaches a peak;
continues with Philip's confronting Elisabeth about her apparent infidelity;
and ends in a thrilling quartet for Philip, Elisabeth and two other principal characters."It would be enough to have this third act
to make 'Don Carlo' a sensational masterpiece," Furlanetto
said.
By
Chris Pasles
Times Staff Writer
September 22, 2006
In the new Los Angeles Opera production of Verdi's
"Don Carlo," the "money" notices have gone to a singer who
has long been a stalwart of San Diego Opera but is only now making his
"It is a complicated role, but it's so beautiful," Furlanetto said recently as he sat in a lounge at the
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. "It's so well written, and it's so much the
real Verdi cantabile that it's really a promenade."
In fact, singing Philip II for the first time was a career turning point for Furlanetto. In 1986, he stepped in for an indisposed Josi Van Dam at a Salzburg Easter Festival production led! by Herbert von Karajan.
"I basically jumped in without any rehearsal in a production that is still
available because there are videos," he said, enunciating slowly in his
sonorous, dark-toned speaking voice. "The day after, everybody in the
world knew who I was and that I had been chosen by Karajan. Immediately,
Not bad for a lad who hailed from Friuli, a relatively isolated region of
Born in 1949, Furlanetto was a natural singer who, he
said, had "a tiny tenor voice" as a kid. "I remember my
great-grandfather teaching me arias. I loved to sing. It didn't matter if it
was opera, pop or whatever. In the second half of the '60s, with the incredible
explosion in pop music, of course I had a group. I had a guitar. My voice at
that time was already a dark voice."
But opera prevailed. He made his stage debut in 1974 as the sinister assassin Spara! fucile
in Verdi's "Rigoletto," at Lonigo in northern
"Mozart gave me everything, opened all the doors," he said. But as
he's grown older, he's given up singing most of those roles onstage.
"When I was in my early 30s, Figaro was pure happiness," he said.
"It was joy because the character of Figaro was very much linked to that
moment in my life. Giovanni, I still do. Figaro, Leporello"
Don Giovanni's long-suffering valet
"are quite physical, and you
should be a young man in your 30s or 40s to do them.
"Now when I do Leporello in concert, it's better
than ever vocally. But when it comes to being onstage, I do it, but I am also
cheating very well because while I still jump around, instead of pure
happiness, sometimes it's fatigue."
Besides, there was the big Verdi repertory waiting for him.
"! I started with the Verdi, the deep Verdi, because I felt that it was
the moment to find again that kind of happiness," he said. "And I
realized it was in the big Verdi roles."
For L.A. Opera audiences, the third act of "Don Carlo" is the one
that has most likely raised the hair on the backs of their necks. It's special
for Furlanetto too. The act begins with Philip's
agonizing lament that his young wife, Elisabeth, doesn't love him; proceeds to
the king's duet with the dreaded Grand Inquisitor, where the struggle between
church and state reaches a peak; continues with Philip's confronting Elisabeth
about her apparent infidelity; and ends in a thrilling quartet for Philip,
Elisabeth and two other principal characters.
"It would be enough to have this third act to make 'Don Carlo' a
sensational masterpiece," Furlanetto said.
The first Italian to sing Boris Godunov at
"Boris is, of course, a universe of everything," he said. "In
Boris, you have love for the kids, the politician, the mad scene even somebody becoming mad is extremely
interesting, and madness leading to death in the theater is always extremely
interesting."
But his favorite role is the title character in the rarely performed "Don Quichotte" Massenet's 1910 version of Cervantes'
masterwork which he is scheduled to
sing in
"It's mostly an unknown opera," he said. "Nowadays, they don't
do it anymore. But the character of Don Quichotte is
so beautiful, and Massenet did so sensationally well with it."
Otherwise, he said, he's pretty much sung "all the roles" he's wanted
to, except for one the overbearing
nobleman Baron Ochs in Strauss' "Der
Rosenkavalier."
"He's often played as a caricature, b! ut Ochs has this fantastic spirit in the words he
says and the way he lives," Furlanetto said.
"It would be extremely interesting from the acting point of view because
you need to be a country noble which is different from a city noble.
It's more interesting, the country noble."
Although no dates have been announced, he said he's talked with the Salzburg
Festival about tackling the role.
"Maybe I would need two years of full immersion in the text because it's
not just German, it's Austrian, with that dialect influence," he said.
"Therefore you need to do it properly.
"If I cannot do it properly, I won't do it. Simple as
that."
chris.pasles@latimes.com
'Don Carlo'
Where: Los
Angeles Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion,
When: 7 p.m.
Sunday and Thursday, 12:30 p.m. Oct. 1
Price: $30 to
$220
Contact:
(213) 972-8001 or www.laopera.com
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