Recording of the Week, Franco-Italian recitals from Benjamin Bernheim and Pene Pati

Unable to choose between two superb French/Italian recitals from a pair of outstanding lyric tenors this week, I’ve decided to split the honours and tell you a little about both…

First up is the Frenchman Benjamin Bernheim, whose Boulevard des Italiens (his second album for Deutsche Grammophon) delivers a potted history of Italian opera composers in Paris - the ‘Boulevard’ of the title houses both the Opéra Garnier and the Opéra-Comique, and the beautifully-plotted programme features works which were either premiered at one of these houses or given there in revised versions to suit the tastes of the Parisian public.

The opening track, at first glance, seems to be an odd man out: Puccini’s Madame [sic] Butterfly isn’t a work one usually associates with the French capital, but its inclusion here is justified by the fact that Puccini reworked the score substantially for its Paris premiere. And Bernheim’s ravishing account of Pinkerton’s self-pitying farewell (here rendered as ‘Adieu, séjour fleuri!’) needs no special pleading: the French translation plus a certain je ne sais quoi in the wind-playing cast a fascinating new light on the music, which here sounds for all the world as if it could have sprung from the pen of Gounod.

Thereafter, the first stretch of the album is devoted to French Donizetti and Verdi - but later on things veer pleasingly off the beaten track thanks to the collaboration of the indefatigable folk at Bru Zane, exhumers extraordinaires of all things French, operatic and esoteric. An aria from Cherubini’s Ali Baba (me neither!) in which the impoverished hero laments the loss of his beloved Délie to the wealthy Aboul-Hassan is a gem in itself, and showcases Bernheim’s immaculately controlled top C - produced in accordance with historical tradition, with a voix mixte rather than the full-bodied sound which later became the operatic norm.

Elsewhere, though, the seamless integration of Bernheim’s voice is a joy in itself, as is his elegant phrasing, immaculate diction and subtle characterisations: the heart of the album, for me, is the extended version of the ‘Friendship Duet’ from Don Carlos, in which he and his compatriot Florian Sempey capture the intimacy of the two men’s bond (and the anxieties which beset them) to perfection. Bernheim’s yet to sing the conflicted Spanish prince on stage, but whenever he’s ready I want to be there.

Over on Warner Classics, the Samoan Pene Pati makes an enormously likeable debut with a programme of French and Italian opera arias – though there’s no direct overlap with Bernheim, he too strikes a canny balance between repertoire staples and comparative rarities, including arias from Gounod’s Polyeucte, Rossini’s Moïse et Pharaon, and Meyerbeer’s L’étoile du Nord. Having begun his career as a backing-singer for Andrea Bocelli, Pati subsequently found considerable fame in New Zealand as one-third of the classical crossover trio SOL3 MIO in parallel to launching a mainstream operatic career.

On the evidence here, his star looks set to rise and rise: the opening Rigoletto excerpts in particular showcase an open, golden sound that’s more than a little reminiscent of the young Pavarotti, with free, ringing top notes and an easy, unmannered charm which makes the Duke’s paean to female fickleness come up as fresh as paint. A more extrovert vocal personality than Bernheim, he shares something of his colleague’s youthful brightness of tone, yet there’s an additional muscle and flexibility to the voice that will likely take him in quite a different direction from the Frenchman as their careers progress…

In the affable booklet-interview, Pati stresses that serving up a banquet of ‘high notes blasted out’ wasn’t his game-plan for the album, but sailing the high Cs may well become his destiny (or at least a significant part of it): in the final stretches of Arnaud’s aria from Guillaume Tell he tackles a veritable assault-course of them with the agility of an Olympic pole-vaulter, sustaining the final one for a good twenty seconds without so much as a hint of unsteadiness. Like his Warner/Erato stablemates Michael Spyres and Bryan Hymel, he’ll prove a godsend to casting-directors looking for someone equal to the gnarly demands of French heroic repertoire, and in the meantime this hugely enjoyable album is far more than a standard-issue calling-card.