Ferruccio Tagliavini

Ferruccio Tagliavini asked his audience at the HST to be kind to him, and for pity's sake, perhaps, they were. They cheered.

The tenor sang in a voice harsh from top to bottom, unsure of every transition from mezza voice to full voice and, by the end of the evening, badly hoarse. On every note he worked audibly to stay in tune, but for all his trouble he was consistently flat; occasional sounds had no pitch at all. In the simplest pieces he was mildly affecting, but whatever he thought should be grandiose was rendered with grunts, gasps, bodily jerks, and fierce glances that are even sillier in recital than they are on stage.

He mixed colorless Italian and Spanish songs with minor arias by Cilea, Caccini, Massenet, Lalo, Puccini, and Bellini, and since the Puccini was "E Lucevan le Stelle," which is barely music, Bellini was left as the tallest of the pygmies. An usher told me that Tagliavini has been singing these bleak, unimaginative programs for years.