Although some may argue differently, experience has shown that music and song are generally better conveyed when the performer in question has a personal attachment to them. This particular affective connection definitely shone through during Cliff Zammit Stevens’ concert at Pjazza Teatru Rjal, where the acclaimed tenor dedicated a night to those pieces which he feels most represented by as an individual and are full of the “love, loss and drama” which he channels through his voice.

Although this concert was Zammit Steven’s eighth, it was his second in Pjazza Teatru Rjal performing as a soloist with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Philip Walsh, together with soprano Nicola Said.

Starting with a rousing performance of Georges Bizet’s overture to Carmen, a perennial crowd-pleaser, the orchestra successfully geared the audience and set the stage for Zammit Stevens’ triumphant entrance where he took to the stage to perform the evening’s first piece, Leoncavallo’s Mattinata, a piece much beloved by the late, great Luciano Pavarotti.

Having not yet had the opportunity to hear Zammit Stevens sing live before, I was pleasantly surprised to find that he was able to give it the suitable Mediterranean warmth and colour that this light piece about the beauty of the morning requires.

Zammit Stevens’ and Said’s voices blended together beautifully.

Cliff Zammit Stevens was able to bring his characteristic warmth and charm both to his songs as well as to his addresses to the audience

With his self-professed love for the intense, it was little wonder that Zammit Stevens delighted in playing the role of the belligerent and amorous Duke and was able to bring to it the required maverick charm and youth.

Reminiscent of a young Joseph Calleja, Zammit Stevens’s velvety voice was able to embrace the audience at a number of levels and despite his relatively tender age, he succeeded in giving the great arias of Verdi and Donizetti their requisite depth and poignancy without it coming across as being contrived and artificial.

Indeed, when he performed Esulti pur la barbara from Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore in the second half of the evening, it become abundantly clear just why his first performance in the PopUp Opera stole the show with several magazines and news publications commenting on the exceptional promise that he shows as a young tenor.

A couple of particular favourites of mine from the night had to be Il Mio Tesoro from Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Pablo Sorozabal’s No Puede Ser. I truly felt Il Mio Tesoro was executed both deliciously as well as securely, given the range expected of this particular piece thanks to Mozart’s love of extended lines, great leaps between the notes themselves and the expected delicate phrase endings.

Indeed, this particular style of aria has always reminded me of gymnastic floor routines where participants must soar through the air gracefully with the appearance of weightlessness while performing bold and strong moves before landing lightly and effortlessly on the end of the mat. In the case of No Puede Ser, Zammit Stevens was not only able to bring the necessary disbelief, passion and quite frankly, the breath, needed to defend the woman that he loved, but he did it with such heart wrenching poignancy that the audience felt inclined to forgive her all her unknown crimes.

Zammit Stevens’ annual concert was a celebration of the myriad shades of human emotion and it was nothing short of a pleasure to witness a promising young musician go head to head with such challenging pieces and practically swan through the mostly Italian and French much-loved classics with relative ease.

Although it is no easy feat to be able to communicate and connect with audiences on the profound level needed for opera, Zammit Stevens was able to bring his characteristic warmth and charm both to his songs as well as to his addresses to the audience. I’m sure that it will be a truly beautiful thing to see how his voice and career will flourish further in the coming years.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.