Tenor Joseph Calleja will tomorrow morning be a guest on the BBC’s main breakfast programme, which features prominent personalities from the political world as well as show business.
Mr Calleja, who performs in Verdi’s Requiem at London’s Royal Albert Hall today as part of the BBC Proms series, is currently promoting his new CD, The Maltese Tenor, in Britain.
Reviewing the CD, leading critic Hugh Canning wrote in The Sunday Times of London last week: “Calleja sounds at his vocal peak on this, his third album of opera arias...
“The programme announces his move from lighter tenor rep into the full lyric romantic roles in which the young Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras excelled. Calleja doesn’t sound like any of them, although his is a bright, warm, unmistakably Mediterranean timbre, with a distinctive quick vibrato that recalls great tenors of the wind-up-gramophone era...
“He opens with the next role he undertakes at Covent Garden in 2012: Rodolfo in Puccini’s La Bohème. His Che gelida manina is surely the most glamorous and thrilling on disc since Pavarotti’s famous complete recording, but it is no carbon copy. The following O soave fanciulla, with Kurzak, is goose-pimple-raising stuff, too.
“The promise of his Des Grieux (both in Massenet’s and Puccini’s Manon Lescaut operas) is irresistible; his youthful, virile, ardent voice will acquire more light and shade as he prepares to tackle the roles on stage. He has shone as Gabriele Adorno (Simon Boccanegra) in the theatre and shows here that other dramatic Verdi roles, Rodolfo in Luisa Miller and Riccardo in Un ballo in maschera, will soon be within his grasp. In short, a golden-age voice in its prime.”
Interviewed by Michael Roddy of Reuters for a piece that was syndicated around the world, Mr Calleja said on the morrow of his stunning performance in Malta that he believes his “best has just started now”. However, the tenor told the interviewer: “Of course I’m flattered when someone says you remind me of Luciano (Pavarotti) – I’d be a liar if I said a compliment like that doesn’t give me pleasure – but from saying that to saying you’re the next one after him is a whole different kettle of fish. You’d have to be a little bit crazy to even have the expectation to fill his boots.” From London, Mr Calleja moves on to Tel Aviv where he will perform in a concert with American soprano Renée Fleming and conductor Zubin Mehta, who conducted two of the Three Tenors concerts.
This performance will be screened live on Thursday to almost 500 US cinemas.
The Breakfast Show appearance will be Mr Calleja’s second on a BBC flagship programme in the space of a month.
He was interviewed by leading presenter Andrew Marr in June and performed E lucevan le stelle from Tosca.
The interview and performance may be viewed on the following link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13919252 .