-The evil villain of Rigoletto is a milestone in the career of the Canarian tenor, who has performed it more than 200 times all over the world.
There are iconic characters that periodically return to a singer’s repertoire. The evil Duca di Mantova (Duke of Mantua), from the popular opera Rigoletto, is a role that Celso Albelo has sung in more than twenty theaters, from Japan to Italy, passing through Switzerland, Austria, Monaco, France, and, of course, Spain. The number of performances of Verdi’s masterpiece that the Spanish singer has interpreted now exceeds 200, the last one this past February in the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Albelo debuted the role in 2006, in Busseto, Verdi’s land par excellence; he confesses that having “stepped into the shoes” of the Duca in so many different productions now allows him to approach it “from another perspective; the character has been accompanying me throughout my entire career and logically my vision of the role has been changing both vocally and psychologically, but it is a luxury to have had the opportunity to sing it over such a prolonged span of time, because you feel that you know all its facets. On the other hand, returning to the Ópera de Oviedo, where I have sung so many times, and meeting again with its audience is an immense joy, even more so with this role.”.
Celso Albelo already performed the Duca in the Campoamor in 2017, a character that he has also taken to the Teatro Real in Madrid, Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville, Palau de les Arts in Valencia, Wiener Staatsoper, Opernhaus Zürich, Solothurn Festival, Opéra de Monte-Carlo, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, Teatro San Carlo in Naples, Teatro Verdi in Salerno, Terme di Caracalla in Rome, Teatro Regio in Parma, Teatro Verdi in Busseto, Teatro Comunale in Bologna, Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Macerata Opera Festival, Les Chorégies d’Orange, as well as the Japanese Nagoya Civic Hall, Biwako Hall in Otsu and Bunkamura Orchard Hall in Tokyo.
In the performances scheduled for December 12, 14, 17, 20 by the Ópera de Oviedo, Celso Albelo will share the stage with Ernesto Petti in the role of Rigoletto, Alexandra Nowakowski as Gilda, Roberto Scandiuzzi as Sparafucile and Sandra Ferrández as Maddalena, in a production with stage direction by Susana Gómez and with maestro Oliver Díaz at the head of the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias and the Coro Titular de la Ópera de Oviedo (Coro Intermezzo).
Among the upcoming commitments of the Tenerife-born tenor are his return to the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb as the protagonist of Massenet’s Werther and to the Madrid Teatro Real to once again take on the role of Manrico in Verdi’s Il Trovatore.