Recording of the Week, Sopranista from Samuel Mariño

In the unlikely event of being granted a full-pay sabbatical to pursue academic research for a year, my topic of choice would have to be the rise and rise of high-voiced male singers over the past fifteen years: since the mid-2000s or thereabouts, there’s been a slow but sure influx of artists who stretch the term ‘countertenor’ to its limits, with Argentinian bombshell Franco Fagioli and the young Korean-American Kangmin Justin Kim (known to many through his drag alter-ego Kimchilia Bartoli) among those who’ve tackled soprano castrato repertoire with aplomb of late.

But Samuel Mariño, whose debut recording on Decca is out today, kicks things up a notch further: the young Venezuelan, who made waves at the Neue Stimmen Competition in 2017 and released a hugely impressive recital on Orfeo two years ago, is no countertenor with a formidable upper extension, but an out-and-proud male soprano whose silvery vocal timbre is often virtually indistinguishable from his female counterparts.

Mariño’s programme of operatic arias by Mozart, Saint-Georges, Cimarosa and Gluck centres on repertoire which was originally written for the great soprano castrati of the late eighteenth century (a snapshot of Mozart’s Cherubino, conceived as a trouser-role, being an audacious exception), and there’s a peculiar magic in hearing a male voice shine so brightly in repertoire that’s been almost exclusively assigned to female singers in modern times.

Skip straight to ‘Aer tranquillo’ from Mozart’s Il re pastore (composed for Tommaso Consoli) to hear what makes Mariño so special: the high tessitura fits him like a particularly well-tailored glove, with no hint of pressure or discomfort in the tone, and the pinpoint-accurate staccato high Ds and E flat in his gravity-defying cadenza would stand comparison with a Natalie Dessay or an Edita Gruberová.

Arias from Mitridate (Sifare’s ‘Lungi da te’) and Cimarosa’s Oreste also impress, with Mariño amply and tastefully demonstrating that he’s capable of sustaining and colouring those stratospheric high notes as well as pinging them out for special effect. His easy agility is also something to marvel at, with no hint of aspiration in the numerous coloratura passages, and the voice always seems fully integrated across its wide range (a real contrast to Fagioli, whose tendency to emphasise dramatic gear-changes in register isn’t everyone’s cup of tea).

It’s a treat, too, to hear two arias from Saint-Georges’s comic opera L’amant anonyme (in which a young woman is inundated with billets-doux from a nameless suitor who turns out to be a shy male friend), where the composer’s often stormy writing reveals a real blade in the voice that’s been hitherto kept under wraps. Hopefully the forthcoming biopic Chevalier (starring Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Saint-Georges) will prompt more companies to bring this delectable work to the stage in the near future.

Reservations? Well, maybe just one or two. Mariño’s at his considerable best in the numbers which showcase that radiant, secure upper register in all its glory, and the lower-lying arias which are typically allocated to female mezzos today perhaps don’t sparkle as brightly as the rest of the programme: Sesto’s sublime appeal to the emperor’s better nature from La clemenza di Tito exposes a certain lack of ballast at the bottom of the voice, and in Cherubino’s famous ‘Voi che sapete’ (a deceptively difficult sing, despite its presence on the Grade Six ABRSM syllabus!) some of the intonation is uncharacteristically off-centre. Nonetheless, he captures the hormonal page-boy’s breathless excitement at being asked to give a private performance in his crush’s boudoir quite beautifully: I’d love to see Mariño step into the flamboyant shoes of Kangmin Justin Kim (who made history as the first male Cherubino at Covent Garden a few years ago) and sing the full role in a staged production.

Tiny caveats notwithstanding, then, there’s much to enjoy here and the possibilities are really rather mouthwatering: Mariño’s still only 29, and on this evidence he’s likely to prove a real gift to directors and conductors keen to cast a male singer in castrato roles which have been out of reach for so long. And the orchestral playing throughout is scintillating.