Opera’s Next Wave
During the 2011–12 season, Italian bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni pulled off the operatic equivalent of what cricket or hockey fans would call a “hat trick.” In October, Pisaroni’s louche, lanky, neatly sung Leporello stole the show in the Met’s new production of Don Giovanni. A few months later, on New Year’s Eve, Pisaroni scored another hit with his vocal and dramatic tour de force as the grotesque, pathetic Caliban in the world premiere of the Met’s Baroque pastiche, The Enchanted Island. On the last day of February, Pisaroni affirmed his status as a Baroque-music phenom with his Lyric Opera of Chicago debut in Handel’s Rinaldo, in which his robustly sung Argante romped to wicked effect with the vigorous Armida of Elza van den Heever. Read more