Tuesday 10 November 2009

Se il cor guerriero

I have been wanting to put this aria on the blog a while ago. This is a beautiful evocative piece that will make you forget (a bit) about the gloomy November temperature. It is from Vivaldi's Tito Manlio, which I know close to nothing about, except this brilliant piece. It is sung here by Dmitri Hvorostovski, but I discovered the aria during an evening of 2007, watching on the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, where it was performed by Shenyang. Shenyang won the competition with such ease, and I was blown away when he sang Se il cor guerriero. he had such control over his voice, and he was still in his early 20s.

4 comments:

Gwen Buchanan said...

How timely... I just found a beautifully illustrated book last week at a second hand store... "Vivaldi 1678-1741".. and promptly brought it home... I love it...

The Artful Gypsy aka Wendy the Very Good Witch said...

If that is a photo of the person singing...then I can hardly believe it! That voice does not sound like it would be coming out of that boy. And granted he's in his 20's, but still....how very strange this seems to me. :o)

Guillaume said...

@Gwen-I hope you will display the book on your blog. I love old, nicely illustrated books.
@Wendy-Maybe I was not clear enough in the post: Hvorostovski is not a boy: he was born in 1962. The first time I heard the aria, however, it was sung by the very young Shenyang, still in his 20s.

The Artful Gypsy aka Wendy the Very Good Witch said...

Ah ha....well that makes more sense to me. I misunderstood. The photo looked so young to me, but the voice sounded so deep and manly, which makes me think 'older'. Although a deep manly voice doesn't just exist for men that are old, so that was an unfounded assumption on my part in retrospect. Beautiful voice all the same! Thank you for the clarification. :o)