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Dmitri Hvorostovsky: The Siberian Express
| Article
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19029 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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1 / 1991 |
1,162 Words |
| Author
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Lawrence O'Toole
Lawrence O'Toole writes for Entertainment Weekly and other
national publications. |
He has already been christened "The Siberian Express" by one scribe eager, as many are, to give a name to the phenomenon known as Dmitri Hvorostovsky. At the tender age of twenty-seven, Hvorostovsky (pronounced Vah-rah-stav-ski) came out of nowhere (i.e., Krasnoyarsk, Sibaria) and turned the vocal world topsy-turvy. His career in the West dates from the summer of 1989 when the baritone won the Singer of the World Competition in Cardiff, Wales, and quickly went on the triumphs in London, at Wigmore Hall, and New York, at Alice Tully Hall.
By the time he showed up at Carnegie Hall in November of last year for an eagerly anticipated recital, Dimitri Hvorostovsky had become a bona fide media event. Men's fashion magazines, which normally have little to do with the world of classical music, were doing profiles on him. His first disc of Tchaikovsky and Verdi arias shot to the top of the classical best-seller list. Covent Garden, La Fenice, La Scala, and San Francisco quickly contracted him for operatic appearances (a few of which he has already made) in works by Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Verdi, and Bellini. It has not hurt in the least that he is devilishly handsome. He has the world; it would seem, on a singing string.
The Carnegie Hall concert was, in a word, a sensation and, as the clich? goes, he had New York at his feet. Overnight sensations come and go; young gorgeous voices, taxed by the greed of ambition, burn out; or else beautiful vocal instruments have nothing to say--they just stand there and sound great. Hvorostovsky belongs to none of these categories. His instrument, an essentially lyric baritone of wide range, plangent expression, and various colors, resides inside a true artist who feels everything he sings and is able, through sheer dramatic instinct, to convey those feelings to a rapt and captive audience.
Hvorostovsky's voice has an unusual tenorial sheen to it, bright and sweet in the middle and upper-middle register, but it also owns a dark and urgent quality on the bottom. Depending upon where he places the voice in his head, it can sound either boyish or masculine. Occasionally the top can be a touch strangled: He (healthily) will cut off a note rather than push it into real strain. With amazing breath control he can float phrases and notes, so gently and at such length that it can seem to take one's breath away. It is not a big sound, but it is a securely projected one.
The New York recital was carefully and pleasingly chosen. The first half was given over to Italian classical arias ranging from Antonio
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