ENO's Italian night with Edgaras Montvidas
English National Opera briefly became the Italian National Opera when a late indisposition last week meant a stand-in had to perform in Italian for Donizetti's Elixir of Love – with the rest of the cast singing in English. According to Norman Lebrecht's blog, Slipped Disc, the plucky subsitute tenor was a Lithuanian, Edgaras Montvidas. - writes Charlotte Higgins, Chief Arts Correspondent of The Guardian.
According to Norman Lebrecht "the results were so exhilarating that the audience left begging for repeat performances." The performance ended with Montvidas in a clinch with soprano Sarah Tynan "so close and prolonged I thought it was going to take a fire-hose to prise them apart". As Lebrecht points out, the glorious muddle of tongues resulted in the kind of "linguistic porridge you hear every day of the week on the top deck of a London bus". Maybe ENO should make a habit of it.
guardian.co.uk
