Our beloved Piero is making great strides and is showing off, slowly, slowly, all the years of study.
The occasion was in Bologna, in a small deconsecrated church. The event was organized by Fulvio Massa, Piero’s singing teacher.
I’m translating this nice article for you, which was not published by one of the many fan pages of Il Volo, but by the blog “Toni Semitoni”, who you’ll understand right away, understands music, especially classical.
To see the original blog, click the link below:
Zitti zitti, piano piano – Concerto con Piero Barone, Claudia Corona e Thiago Felipe Stopa
The translation:
Right in the center, surrounded by the oceanic university nightlife, on the corner between via Begatto and via Armando Quadri there is a small Baroque church, no longer intended for worship, dedicated to Saints Damiano and Cosma, which would need restoration.
In it various activities take place, mostly musical, and in it, from time to time, the master Fulvio Massa organizes essays or concerts with his singing students.
With a few phone calls and a few messages, the little church is easily filled with an intimate audience, at most forty people.
The climate that is created is therefore attractive, friendly, familiar, engaging due to the direct contact with the singers.
Yesterday evening Fulvio organized a beautiful concert in which the soprano Claudia Corona, the baritone Thiago Felipe Stopa and the tenor Piero Barone performed.
Ohibò! Piero Barone the singer of Il Volo?
A celebrity performing for friends?
Yes, that’s right, it’s really him.
Before being artists, singers are athletes – singing is based, in fact, on a delicate muscular balance – who need not only a coach, but also a trusted person who carries out checks during their career, true revisions of singing technique.
The concert in question, in addition to exhibiting three beautiful voices from Fulvio’s school, was an opportunity for Thiago and Claudia to try new opera pieces and for Piero to try his hand at an exclusively lyrical environment and in front of an audience of opera aficionados, often severe, ferocious and partisan audiences.
Therefore, hush, hush, slowly, slowly, as if it were a secret sect, Fulvio gathered a small audience who attended a truly high-quality concert; the assiduous opera house goers, not only of the Teatro Comunale, but also of other theaters not only in Italy, who were present said they felt greater pleasure in this friendly concert but organized with sincere commitment and excellent results.
(a long list of sung opera pieces follow)
And now we come to the singers.
Thiago Felipe Stopa is a Brazilian baritone who has been studying for four years in Bologna with Fulvio Massa. Not only does he have a beautiful, wide, extended voice, like a true baritone, but one that is able to excite. The legato recalls that of a cello is noteworthy, so all the cantabiles are of great impact. The Italian pronunciation is excellent.
Claudia Corona has a top-quality timbre, a very generous voice not only in the high notes, sure, ringing and voluminous, but also in the low register.
The agilities are precise and it has beautiful trills as if performed on a violin. The half-voices, even in the high notes, are very suggestive, firm, so he is able to make contrasts of great effect as we heard throughout the concert.
Piero Barone live, without the intermediation of microphones, offers a voice of magnificent quality: the timbre is very rich, like that of tenors from the Spanish area (Fleta, Lazaro, Domingo and Aragall come to mind), the high notes are ringing and easy, the half-voices are sweet and enveloping, truly bewitching. Even as an interpreter he appears convincing that, when necessary, he knows how to be sweet and passionate. A voice like this is missing on the lyrical stage.
Marco Belluzzi’s piano accompaniment is excellent.
Bravo to maestro Fulvio Massa who, with his teachings and experience, has handed down the teachings of Paride Venturi and Arturo Melocchi.
In short, a beautiful and enjoyable evening.
