Since April this year, an interesting CD, España alla Rossini, can be found as part of the in-flight playlist on board British Airways flights.
The CD has been recorded on the “Itinerant” label by mezzo-soprano Anna Tonna. Given the surname, this lady could hardly be Italian or Spanish so one could take it for granted that she must be Maltese.
In fact Tonna was born and bred in New York, is American and on the Tonna side is a granddaughter of Maltese emigrants.
She made her debut at the Lincoln Centre, New York, in Mascagni’s Guglielmo Ratcliff, has sung at the Illinois Opera, New Jersey State Opera and Connecticut Grand Opera, the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico and at the Auditorio Nacional de Madrid. She was Fulbright scholar in Spain (2007-2008) and recorded a CD, Las canciones de Julio Gómez, on the Verso label.
Asking her how this passion for Rossini started, she said that she was always attracted to Rossini’s works.
Not only did she find rich operatic scores with parts for mezzo-soprano but, coupled with a separate interest in Spain and Spanish culture, she could bring together these different cultural currents in the smoothest way possible.
“Well, anybody who even takes a casual look at Rossini’s biography, inevitably knows that his first wife, the madrileña Isabel Colbran (1786-1845), was a highly-renowned Spanish mezzo-soprano.
“Rossini wrote leading operatic roles for her such as Desdemona in Otello, Elena in La Donna del Lago, Elcia in Mosè in Egitto, Anna in Maometto II and title roles in Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra, Zelmira, Armida and Semiramide. Besides, in his wonderful Stabat Mater Rossini wrote a great part for the mezzo-soprano.”
Rossini was a close friend of the Sevillano tenor/composer Manual Garcia (1775-1832), father of Maria Malibran and Pauline Viardot, respectively among the greatest sopranos and mezzo-sopranos of the 19th century.
The CD is the result of a project which highlights what many scholars rate as the best Spanish-inspired works Rossini wrote
By the time he wrote Stabat Mater, Colbran and Rossini had separated. Delving deeper in Rossini’s Spanish connection(s) Tonna found that, apart from the Spanish setting of his greatest opera, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Rossini wrote a number of classical songs and non-operatic arias either with a Spanish subject, or, even if scored for voice and to lyrics in French and Italian, these are based on typically Spanish musical rhythms. It is enough to quote some of the latter in works based on the aragonesa, bolero, Tirana and zortziko.
During his only visit to Spain in 1831-1932, Rossini wrote some of these works right there on the spot. Others were published before and/or included many years later in some of his “sins of old age” as he called them. She could therefore blend these different musical currents into one effort the result of which is her new CD.
The CD is the result of a project which highlights what many scholars rate as the best Spanish-inspired works Rossini wrote.
“I absolutely love the great mezzo aria from Stabat Mater, namely Fac ut portem, which is the only sacred track and non-Spanish one in my CD,” says the singer.
On her first visit to Malta in 2012 she gave a recital at San Anton Palace, hosted by former president George Abela and his wife.
I did not know that Tonna was second cousin to Mrs Abela, and, judging by her performance then and the increasingly fulfilled promise she has since displayed, was enough to confirm her real merit as performer and interpreter.
She sang to piano accompaniment by Emilio González Sanz, who is also at the piano on the CD in all but one track.
“It is an authentic 19th-century Broadwood, because research revealed that Rossini’s own favourite piano was by that British firm,” adds Tonna.
No doubt some of these works have been recorded here and there but never all on the same CD. One has never been recorded. This is small scale cantata for the christening in 1827 of Arturo Olimpio Aguado, son of Rossini’s influential Spanish banker friend, Alejandro, Marqués de las Marismas del Guadalquivír. This is sung by the [SMTB] Cuarteto Vocal Cavatina with Aurelio Viribay at the piano.
Tonna continues: “Tenor Miguel Borrallo sings with me the duet Les amants de Séville. Adding to the distinct Spanish flavour are two tracks: Nizza, je puis sans peine and Canzonetta spagnuola. Apart from the piano, there is also castanet accompaniment which is entrusted to Cristina Gómez Tornamira. She specialises in the beautiful idiom of the Escuela Bolera. A combination of song and this particular form of dance is part of this project which so very dear to me.”
A busy lady, Tonna has among her upcoming engagements a zarzuela evening at the Carnegie Hall and, also in New York, a concert featuring Donizetti’s operas which have a Spanish setting. It is of course her great wish to be able to sing in Malta.