Matthew Polenzani.(Opera Review)

* "LIVE AT THE VERBIER FESTIVAL & ACADEMY" Songs by Rossini, Pizzetti, Pedrotti, Schubert, Poulenc, Finzi. Vignoles, piano. Texts and translations. VAI Audio VAIA 1238

The little Swiss town of Verbier, once sleepy out of ski season, has become in the past decade the home of one of Europe's most stimulating summer music festivals and academies for young musicians. Events at Verbier, presented in appealing venues, attract a largely international, muhilingual audience, who are attentive and appreciative of the fare at hand, as is palpable in listening to this document of a 2003 recital by the enormously appealing lyric tenor, Matthew Polenzani.

The natural ease and directness of Polenzani's delivery seem to capture the audience increasingly as the recital progresses; even if one feels that some years down the road we will doubtless be listening to a more insightful interpreter of greater depth, what is there at present draws us by its very lack of affectation.

Polenzani brings a limpid legato to Rossini's "La partenza" and gorgeous, pure vowels that breathe life into d'Annunzio's poem and Pizzetti's evocative setting of "I pastori." Carlo Pedrotti's "Serenata" receives a treatment that sounds sensual in an ingenuous way, with a flawless ...