Vittorio Grigolo - Arrivederci (2011)

Vittorio Grigolo follows his 2010 debut solo recital album for Sony of arias by Verdi, Puccini, and Donizetti with a broader mix of arias and a healthy selection of Romantic and post-Romantic Italian songs. It's an old-fashioned kind of program (with the addition of a few more recent songs in a similar style) that would have been characteristic of the repertoire of early- to mid-century Italian tenors like Beniamino Gigli and Tito Schipa. It perfectly reflects Grigolo's identification with the aesthetics of an earlier Golden Age of Italianate singing; his singing, like those of his heroes, is intensely emotional, earnest, suavely seductive, and passionate, and it comes with some of their mannerisms, like bending pitches and lingering on important notes slightly more than is standard for the early 21st century. His voice is light and doesn't have anything like the weight of Pavarotti's, but it's easy to see why he's being hailed as a bright new hope for Italian opera by fans of Pavarotti's popular style of vocalism. The lightness of his voice is especially well suited to the songs, such as classics by Leoncavallo and Ernesto de Curtis, and he is fully persuasive in putting them across. The results in the operatic arias are usually very fine, but somewhat less consistent. The forcing that marred some of the tracks on his first Sony recital is under better control, but when he does push the volume and intensity, as at the end of "M'appari" from Flotow's Martha, he tends to veer out of tune. This is an album likely to delight fans of old-fashioned bel canto singing. Pier Giorgio Morandi leads Coro and Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Parma in shapely, idiomatic performances. Sony's sound is beautifully balanced and natural. -- Stephen Eddins