“Anna Netrebko, Yusif Eyvazov raise roof in power operatic performance at the Broad Stage”
“Eyvazov is an exciting tenor whose sound is metallic, stentorian and markedly Italianate. (He’s Azerbaijani, born in Algeria, trained in Italy.) . . . his career is beginning to take off. He made his L.A. Opera debut in October in one of the “I Pagliacci” performances. He will make his Vienna State Opera debut later this month in a new production of “Turandot,” conducted by Gustavo Dudamel . . .
Emotions were big. Voices were big. Husband and wife sang as if projecting to the last row of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in a house a sixth its size. You looked into singers’ gaping mouths that, in this intimate space, were like vocal black holes, as if drawing listeners’ very being inescapably into them . . . Netrebko and Eyvazov demonstrated considerable charm and real professionalism . . .
He went eagerly for high notes, striking most of all “E Lucevan le Stelle” from “Tosca,” and an amusingly and intentionally over-the-top “O Sole Mio.”
Each half ended with a big opera duet for lovers. In “O Soave Fanciulla,” Netrebko and Eyvazov sang the last bars off stage and they still sounded louder than many a singer does on stage. In a duet from “Andrea Chénier” they thrillingly raised the rafters.
This kind of evening has qualities of opera and athletics, but it is ultimately something else. The unalloyed dominance of the pure human voice trained to do exceptional things reaches us in a way that no other sound does. The reasons are psychological, physiological and sociological. At intermission, I heard responses to the singers as orgasmic and atomic . . . there is nothing else quite like it.”
Mark Swed – Los Angeles Times