– The third International Opera Festival of Zagreb opens next September 9th at the Croatian National Theatre with Werther and the Canarian tenor as the protagonist of the emblematic opera by Massenet. A few days later, on the 23rd, Celso Albelo will leap into the purest romantic bel canto by stepping into the shoes of the fearsome main role of Bellini’s Il Pirata.
Celso Albelo returns this month to the “fascinating” role of Werther, in the words of the tenor himself, which he has performed twice in the past, both at the Tenerife Opera, where he debuted it in 2016, and later that same year a few months after at the Teatro Comunale in Bologna. Based on the character from Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, he is the “prototype of the romantic hero,” clarifies the singer from La Laguna; “his is without a doubt a tormented soul, poetic and intensely sensitive, whose obsessive passion and radical idealism condemn him to a tragic destiny. Massenet managed, through wonderfully expressive music, to immerse us in his psychology, making his pain move us profoundly; it is a role I tried a few years ago, which I let rest, but to which I return now with great comfort after having already debuted weighty roles by Verdi or Puccini,” states Celso Albelo; “Massenet conceived it for a lyric-spinto tenor voice, without forgetting that there is a version for baritone: the performer, in any case, must be capable of transmitting both the tenderness and vulnerability as well as the climaxes of overflowing passion and heroic despair; an example of this is the aria ‘Pourquoi me réveiller,’ which to this day is a crucial piece of the repertoire and which has transcended the borders of the opera itself due to its beauty.” By the same composer, Albelo has sung Des Grieux from Manon, and, he continues, he is convinced “that the French composer is a genius of orchestration, melody, and lyric theatre,” he assures. The Spanish tenor, who will share the stage with Croatian mezzo-soprano Emilia Rukavina as Charlotte, will be conducted by the baton of Italian Piero Giorgio Morandi at the helm of the Orchestra of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, in a production whose stage direction, scenography, and costume design bear the signature of the three-time Oscar winner Dante Ferretti, a legend of cinema and collaborator with greats like Fellini, Scorsese, or Zeffirelli.
In the midst of expanding his repertoire in recent seasons, Celso Albelo has been incorporating roles of greater vocal weight, but he has not abandoned the romantic bel canto that opened the doors of the great theatres worldwide for him. Thus, next September 23rd he will step into the shoes of the extremely difficult Gualtiero, in Bellini’s Il Pirata, at the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania; the Spanish singer, who has performed the role on other occasions, considers it one of “great vocal and dramatic difficulty, since beyond the almost impossible tessitura, one must at the same time express all the facets of a rebel warrior, yet no less madly in love,” he states; “I remember with special affection when I debuted it in 2019 at the Teatro Real in Madrid, or later, in 2021, when I sang it on a stage very dear to me, that of the Massimo in Palermo, and I feel very happy to do it now again in Sicily, this time in Catania, the composer’s hometown.” Scheduled in the context of the Bellini International Context, Il Pirata will be musically directed by Marco Alibrando and the stage direction will be handled by Renato Bonajuto. The score is, without a doubt, one of the most complex by the composer from Catania, and alongside Albelo’s Gualtiero, soprano Irina Lungu as Imogene and baritone Franco Vassallo as Ernesto stand out.