Hidden Gem: Alfredo’s ghost

Alfredo’s ghost

It’s almost like a musical trip around the world:  A singer from the Canary Islands made a record that inspired a career in a young boy from Mexico.  The younger tenor marries an Italian mezzo/violinist, and they create a recital with a Californian pianist.  But in actuality, this international tale is all about Alfredo Kraus, the beloved and respected Met tenor who died in 1999.  With modern-day champions like tenor
Raul Hernandez, mezzo Daniela Nuzzoli (Raul’s wife – both pictured right) and keyboard collaborator Victoria Kirsch (below), who met and conceived this weekend’s program while working together through Palm Desert’s Festival of Opera and Arts.

But the story really starts further back, when Raul was a young boy, growing up in Mexico in a very musical family.  A family friend, a woman of about 75 years old, heard him singing as he played guitar one day, and let him know how much she liked his voice.  She made a gift of an LP of Kraus’ singing, which sparked a serious interest in opera in the younger artist — a spark that eventually grew to prompt Hernandez to attend conservatory in Guadalajara and to build an operatic career, including appearances at the Met and around the world.

Hernandez’s own repertoire has turned out to closely mirror that of Kraus’ in many ways, and the upcoming concert, ‘Homenaje al Gran Tenor‘, is exactly what it proclaims: an homage to the repertoire of one of the world’s great tenorissimos.  Kraus was particularly known for his interpretations of bel canto repertoire, and Sunday’s performance will be chock full of selections that he was known for, or that might have been on his “wish list”:  although he never sang Bizet’s Carmen, for instance, he was known to dearly love the opera.  With the combined talents of this tenor/mezzo team plus one of the finest vocal collaborators in the area, how could they resist?