Carlo Vistoli, countertenor, and Guilio Zappa, piano, carry out a recital within the Board of Officer’s Room on the Park Avenue Armory on September 9, 2026. Picture credit score: Stephanie Berger
Earlier than he made his North American recital debut on the Park Avenue Armory’s Board of Officers Room final Thursday, Carlo Vistoli hadn’t appeared in New York Metropolis since 2017 regardless of his being one of many world’s most in-demand countertenors. In a very different program partnered by the advantageous pianist Giulio Zappa and that includes music by composers from Henry Purcell to Leonard Bernstein, Vistoli deployed a wholesome, good-looking instrument that seamlessly soared from wealthy alto lows to thrilling soprano highs.
Vistoli’s first appeared domestically in 2015 as a member of the seventh version of Jardin des Voix, Les Arts Florissants’s celebrated younger artist program. Like Lea Desandre, a fellow member of that version, Vistoli continues to collaborate with LAF: Simply final 12 months, they launched Nei Giardini d’amore, a CD that includes him and fellow countertenor Hugh Reducing in an bewitching assortment of Italian cantatas and duets.
Two years later, Vistoli returned to Alice Tully Corridor as a part of John Eliot Gardiner’s worldwide Monteverdi450 tour through which the conductor led semi-staged variations of all three of the nice composer’s extant operas. I attended each Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria and L’Incoronazione di Poppea; Vistoli notably stood out within the latter as a love-sick Ottone.
Since then, he’s been featured in a dizzying variety of probably the most prestigious European baroque opera revivals together with showing each in live performance and on stage as Giulio Cesare to Cecilia Bartoli’s Cleopatra. After a 2020 revival of Christopher Alden’s well-traveled manufacturing of Handel’s Partenope on the San Francisco Opera was postponed, it lastly arrived in 2024 with Vistoli as Arsace, an acclaimed portrayal which received him the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Rising Stars Competitors.
Though he appeared within the twin roles of Berengario da Arundel and Adelmo da Otranto in final 12 months’s world premiere of Francesco Filidei’s Il nome della rosa at La Scala, Vistoli’s profession has centered virtually solely on 17th and 18th century music. So one may need anticipated his Armory recital to prioritize that repertoire, however it didn’t. True, he started with a glowing pair of Purcell preparations by Benjamin Britten, adopted by an exquisitely sluggish “Care selve” from Handel’s Atalanta through which he confirmed off a seemingly easy, actual trill, so in contrast to the imprecise shakes to which so many baroque performers resort. Whereas it was a bit odd to listen to Jupiter’s “The place’er you stroll” sung by a countertenor (and Vistoli has recorded Semele’s Athamas), his delightfully ethereal rendition made up for any disappointment that he didn’t embrace a Handelian coloratura showpiece.
The primary half of the recital closed with a pair of “requirements” by Schubert. He vividly differentiated the 2 voices of “Der Tod und das Mädchen” (extra efficiently, I would add, than Lise Davidsen had at Carnegie Corridor in June) and he and Zappa discovered simply the appropriate lilting tempo for Der Schwanengesang’s evergreen “Ständchen.”
A trio of songs by bel canto’s best exponents opened second half. An intoxicatingly beautiful “Vaga luna, che inargenti” by Bellini struck me as an ideal pattern to share with those that declare to hate all countertenors. Rossini adopted: “La legende de Marguerite”, which is similar tune as Cenerentola’s wistful “Una volta c’period un re” and was sung with plangent earnestness and subtly differentiated verses. Donizetti’s “Me voglio fa’ ‘na casa” served as a rousing near the set.
I haven’t typically been a giant fan of countertenors diving into 19th and early 20th century music, however Vistoli’s warmly even and wide-ranging voice mixed along with his unusually delicate deployment of dynamic variation received me over the place, for instance, David Daniels’s Les Nuits d’été or Philippe Jaroussky’s excursions into Schubert or Hahn had not.
Carlo Vistoli, countertenor, and Guilio Zappa, piano, carry out a recital within the Board of Officer’s Room on the Park Avenue Armory on September 9, 2026. Picture credit score: Stephanie Berger
Vistoli too turned to Hahn for Venezia, a three-song cycle in Italian. The standout was “La biondina in gongoletta” through which once more the singer dotted the a number of verses with calmly illuminating touches. His ultimate two choices seemingly stunned many: “Jeanie with the sunshine brown hair” by Stephen Foster and “Someplace” from West Facet Story. The languorous Foster as soon as extra manifested Vistoli’s beguiling legato, whereas the Bernstein was provided as a heartfelt nod to the 25th anniversary of 9/11 on the next day.
4 beneficiant encores adopted together with three opera arias. Vistoli shared that early final 12 months he carried out Ruggiero in Alcina in Rome in a manufacturing by Pierre Audi, the Armory’s Creative Director till his loss of life in Might 2025. Audi invited the singer to carry out as soon as once more in New York and the achingly easy “Verdi prati” proved a advantageous tribute. Subsequent, we have been reminded of Vistoli’s triumph earlier this 12 months once more on the Rome Opera within the title function of Rossini’s Tancredi with a captivating “Di tanti palpiti.” He has incessantly carried out Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice of late, and an unusually brisk “Che farò” adopted earlier than he ended the night with superbly spun-out “Ninna Nanna romagnola,” a conventional lullaby from his native Emilia-Romagna.
I had thought that the Gardiner Monteverdi was the final time I’d seen Vistoli earlier than his Armory look, however then I remembered he was Farnace in Mozart’s Mitridate, Re di Ponto on the Berlin Staatsoper in November 2023. Whereas I nonetheless desire a ballsy mezzo in that function, he sang it with dashingly flamboyant vigor.
On the market outdoors the Board of Officers Room have been copies of Vistoli’s just-released CD devoted to uncommon arias Handel composed (or recomposed) for Italian castrati once they appeared in his English oratorios—an interesting assortment.
The remaining vocal recitals of the 2026 season on the Armory embrace Ben Bliss subsequent month and Deepa Johnny in November.
Christopher Corwin
Christopher Corwin started writing for parterre field in 2011 underneath the pen identify “DeCaffarrelli.” His work has additionally appeared in , The New York Occasions, Musical America, The Observer, San Francisco Classical Voice and BAMNotes. Like many, he got here to opera through the Saturday Met Opera broadcasts which he started listening to at age 11. His explicit enthusiasm is seventeenth and 18th century opera. Since 2015 he has curated the weekly podcast Trove Thursday on parterre field presenting stay recordings.
