100Singers's video: 100 Singers - FLAVIANO LAB

Flaviano Labò, Tenor (1927-1991) Giuseppe Verdi: LA FORZA DEL DESTINO Don Alvaro's aria: "La vita é inferno all'infelice ... O tu che in seno agli angeli" Conducted by Fernando Previtali / Recorded 1956 My personal opinion: "I love the music of Verdi, but my voice loves Donizetti." Luciano Pavarotti's statement unveils the fact, that various composers ask for different vocal techniques and styles. Donizetti needs the long breath, the ray in the height of the voice which is called by Italians 'squillo'. The matured Verdi broke free from the Donizetti model. While the Duke in RIGOLETTO and Alfredo in TRAVIATA need lyric voices with the last echoes of the 'tenore di grazia', Manrico in TROVATORE, Alvaro in FORZA and Radamès in AIDA are hybrid roles which are demanding two voices in only one throat: In Manrico's soft 'cantabile' "Ah, si ben mio" we still find some late memories of the 'canto fiorito' ("la morte a me parrà"). The subsequent 'stretta' "Di quella pira", with its hefty 'gruppetto' ornaments, is dramatic and culminates in an optional 'do di petto', the high C in chest voice. Also Radamès is a dicey pipolar role that needs a dramatic attack in the recitative "Se quel querrier io fossi" and lyricism in the romance "Celeste Aida" with the energetic first high B on "Egerti un trono" and the second B on "... al sol" in the final reprise. The third act requires a dramatic voice with stamina and vigour. The last phrase "Sacerdote, io resto a te" (with the multiple changing of the vowels on the high A) needs the power of a 'tenore con forza', whereas the last act again asks for soft piano singing in "Morir! Si pura e bella". But that's not all: Most of Verdi's vocal effects are settled in the tricky 'passagio' region with the notes E, F and G between the chest and the head register. All this needs a perfect technique that forces the tenor many times to take an inaudible fast breath of air without interrupting the line. The late Carlo Bergonzi (1924-2014) was a master of this 'fiato rubato' technique, and not least therefore an almost ideal Verdi interpreter. A tenor in the footsteps of Bergonzi was Flaviano Labò, a singer "with an authentic timbre for Verdi music and a secure technique for most roles of the composer's repertoire", as Italian critic Giorgio Gualerzi expressed it. Labò was a robust singer, not as aggressive as Mario del Monaco and not as narcissistic as Franco Corelli - and likely for this reason not as well known. Flaviano Labò was the right man at the wrong time. When he came out in 1954, the operatic world was dominated by del Monaco's egocentricity and di Stefano's irresistible charm. Then, in the 1960s, the good looking Franco Corelli rose to stardom, while Bergonzi developed into an extraordinary stylist. Thereafter the Domingo-Pavarotti duel began, and Labò's career faded despite the fact that he was excellent in two of Verdi's most difficult roles: Don Alvaro and Don Carlo. It was also the latter role that ensured Flaviano Labò at least a modest posthumous fame resulting from an excellent 1961 recording of DON CARLO, conducted by Gabriele Santini. The studio performance, many years overlooked by me, presents Antonietta Stella's warm-hearted Elisabetta, the unique King Philippe II of Boris Christoff and the vibrant Posa of Ettore Bastianini in finest condition. Flaviano Labò's Don Carlo has received initially some mixed reviews. For some he was "provincial", for others he was "a welcome surprise". But these were judgements about a studio recording, a medium in which Bergonzi, with all his sensitivity and feeling for phrasing, was vastly superior. Labò, with his burnishing sound, glorious top but little sense for nuances, was a man of the theater, in which "he made more impression than Bergonzi" (Giorgio Gualerzi). Annotator Jan Neckers even wrote, that Flaviano Labò was "the Rolando Villazón of his time" - a totally inappropriate estimation. Villazón never had that secure technique as demonstrated by Flaviano Labò, for example, in the recitative "La vita é inferno all'infelice", starting "O tu che in seno agli angeli", one of Verdi's most refined arias, written in the fall of 1861 for the Saint Petersburg premiere of LA FORZA DEL DESTINO one year later. There is a live recording of the grand act IV duet "Invano Alvaro ti celasti al mondo" (Fidenza, October 26,1961) in which Labò's voice gleams like a beacon in the night and surpasses effortlessly the powerful singing of the young Piero Cappuccilli. Already in 1957 Labò debuted at the Met as Alvaro (next to Zinka Milanov and Leonard Warren) and stayed there until 1971. On May 12, Labò gave his Metropolitan farewell as Radamès in AIDA. As for Puccini, I miss with Labò the honeyed tone of a Björling and the natural appeal of a di Stefano. Nonetheless, he was a reliable singer who lacked only little to be one of the leading tenors in his day - but it wasn't meant to be ...