Rolando Panerai – baritone
 |
The great Florentine baritone
Rolando Panerai made his directors debut in 1972 the Genoa Opera
House with Donizetti’s Il Campanello dello Speziale.
This was followed by Gianni Schicchi (1993), La Bohème
(1994) and Madama Butterfly (1997) for the Festival Puccini
in Torre del Lago, Schicchi again for the Teatro Rendano in
Cosenza and Il Matrimonio Segreto for the Teatro Guimerà in
Santa Cruz in Tenerife.
In the 2010 season he has staged La Traviata at the historic
Teatro Garibaldi in Figline Val d’Arno.
|
The great Florentine baritone Rolando Panerai made his directors debut in 1972
the Genoa Opera House with Donizetti’s Il Campanello dello Speziale.
This was followed by Gianni Schicchi (1993), La Bohème (1994)
and Madama Butterfly (1997) for the Festival Puccini in Torre del
Lago, Schicchi again for the Teatro Rendano in Cosenza and Il Matrimonio
Segreto for the Teatro Guimerà in Santa Cruz in Tenerife.
In the 2010 season he has staged La Traviata at the historic Teatro
Garibaldi in Figline Val d’Arno.
In sixty-three years of intense theatrical activity, he has chalked
up 148 roles ranging from 17th century works to world premières,
with a heavy concentration on the major Mozart, Rossini, Bellini,
Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini protagonists. His reputation is rests
both on the great dramatic roles like the Conte di Luna in Il Trovatore,
Enrico Ashton in Lucia di Lammermoor, Riccardo Forth in I Puritani,
Germont in La Traviata and Marcello in La Bohème as well as
his exceptional interpretations of comic characters like Ford and
later Falstaff in Verdi’s masterpiece, Guglielmo and then Don
Alfonso in Così fan tutte, Belcore and later Dulcamara in
L’elisir d’amore: his interpretation of the protagonist
in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi remains legendary.
A cultivated and eclectic musician, he has performed early, baroque
and classical works ranging from Monteverdi to Handel and from Gluck
to Piccini, also performing works by Wagner, Strauss, Borodin and
Mussorgsky and taking on leading roles in the first performances
of many contemporary pieces including Turchi’s The Good Soldier
Svejk, Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel, Pizzetti’s Il calzare
d’argento, Tosatti’s Una partita a pugni di in which
he sang the role of a boxer, Richard Strauss’s posthumous opera
L’ombra dell’asino, as well as the Italian première
of Kurt Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany.
His discs include 82 complete opera recordings under the baton of
conductors of the caliber of Von Karajan, Prêtre, Davis, Bernstein,
Giulini, Mehta, Cantelli e Kubelik flanked by colleagues like Callas,
Di Stefano, Pavarotti, Alva, Freni, Schwarzkopf, Berganza e Kabaivanska.
The finest Rossini and Mozart Figaro of his generation, he sang
the lead role in Barbiere di Siviglia in the first ever complete
TV opera recording made by the RAI in 1954, returning to the TV studios
for Un Ballo in Maschera in 1956. Much admired for his acting gifts
by great directors like Strehler and Visconti, he was Marcello in
Zeffirelli’s film version of La Bohème, Silvio in Pagliacci
and Ford in Falstaff in Von Karajan’s films, Rigoletto with
Molinari Pradelli in the Dresden film and both Guglielmo and Don
Alfonso in various editions of Così fan tutte.
In 2000 he was Germont in the mega production of La Traviata filmed
and broadcast live from Paris to 125 countries. Awarded the Illica
Prize in 1998, Panerai received the coveted Illica d’Oro prize
in 2009 for his lifelong services to opera.
