Fernando Corena
Fernando Corena (22 December 1916 – 26 November 1984) was a Swiss bass who had a major international opera career from the late 1940s through the early 1980s. He enjoyed a long and successful career at the Metropolitan Opera between 1954 and 1978, and was a regular presence at the Vienna State Opera between 1963 and 1981. His repertoire encompassed both dramatic and comic roles in leading and secondary parts, mainly within Italian opera. He was highly regarded for his performances of opera buffa characters and is generally considered one of the greatest basso buffos of the post-war era. He was heralded as the true successor to comic Italian bass Salvatore Baccaloni, and in 1966 Harold C. Schonberg wrote in The New York Times that he was "the outstanding buffo in action today and the greatest scene stealer in the history of opera".[citation needed]
Life and career
Fernando Corena was born in
At the beginning of World War II, he returned to Switzerland, where he performed regularly on radio broadcasts, and made a few appearances at the
His official professional debut was in
Corena's
Aside from his close relationship to New York, Corena enjoyed considerable success with opera companies both in the United States and Europe. In 1955 he sang Falstaff at the
.Corena possessed a big, handsome, resonant voice that lacked sufficient flexibility to deliver accurately the complexities of Rossini's florid writing. However, his complete involvement in his characters, and sheer physical presence and acting abilities, more than made up for any vocal technical shortcomings. Opera magazine, for instance, noted in a performance in 1954 of Barber of Seville, that as Bartolo, he was "the very picture of self-satisfied middle age. The characterization was an absolutely complete one... Nothing he did was without point, nothing he did failed to contribute to the total character". Thus this was a performance of Barber which was "dominated by the Bartolo".[1]
Corena left many recordings of his best roles, notably two recordings of Mozart's Bartolo in Le nozze di Figaro, under
Fernando Corena died in Lugano, Switzerland, on 26 November 1984, four weeks short of his 68th birthday.
Sources
- ISBN 2-221-06660-X
- Roland Mancini and Jean-Jacques Rouveroux, (orig. H. Rosenthal and J. Warrack, French edition), Guide de l'opéra, Les indispensables de la musique (Fayard, 1995). ISBN 2-213-59567-4
- Metropolitan Opera Encyclopedia, edited by David Anderson ISBN 0-671-61732-X
- Carlo Piccardi (2005). "Fernando Corena". In Andreas Kotte (ed.). OCLC 62309181.
References
- ^ Opera, June 1954, p352
External links
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