Photograph: ©Todd Rosenberg 2026
Final week, Francesco Meli and Lidia Fridman have been available within the Windy Metropolis to assist Music Director Emeritus Riccardo Muti have fun his 600th efficiency, a night of Italian opera, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Meli, a extra entrenched identify who now makes his profession virtually completely in Italy, has been a Muti favourite for some time. (He was Radamès within the 2019 CSO Aïda, amongst different U.S. performances.) Fridman, nonetheless, at simply 30 years outdated is a more moderen and probably extra thrilling amount. “Her supply suffers from a sure hollowness of sound typical of many feminine voices from Jap Europe,” Parterre Field critic Marco Beghelli mentioned of her latest performances in Stiffelio, “however her capability to maneuver the viewers with it, each in pianissimo passages and in heroic thrives, is simple.”
Muti has been recognized to champion sure singers in his operatic work with the CSO; different singers to profit from his regular help are Krassimira Stoyanova, Luca Salsi, Daniela Barcellona, and, after all, Anita Rachvelishvili.
Right this moment’s excerpt sees Meli and Fridman joined by Marko Mimica within the trio from I lombardi performed by Daniel Oren in Madrid final summer season.
Verdi: I lombardi, “Qui posa il fianco!… Qual voluttà trascorrere” (Madrid 2025)
Lidia Fridman
Francesco Meli
Marko Mimica
Conductor: Daniel Oren
Teatro Actual
Madrid
9 July 2025
In-house
