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Miguel Villabella,
though remembered as a quintessential
French tenor, was actually a Basque,
born in Bilbao in 1892. His father was
a singer, a famous Zarzuela baritone,
from whom the young tenor learned much
but a move to Paris led to a meeting
with Lucien Fugère, doyen of
French bass-baritones and musical life
in Paris. He made a concert debut in
San Sebastian in 1917 and his operatic
debut (Tosca) a year later, opened at
the Opéra-Comique in 1920 and
thereafter, once established, was seldom
heard outside France (he did get as
far as Brussels and though he was billed
for a Florence appearance it can’t be
confirmed he actually appeared). His
career wound down after the Second War
– his stage career ended in 1940 - as
he devoted more and more time to teaching
and he died in 1954 after routine surgery.
He took the expected roles, Don José,
Hoffmann, Fernando (in Così),
Des Grieux, Rinuccio and Gérald
amongst them. He sang under Bruno Walter
and recorded Lully (though there’s none
here) so he was certainly no one-dimensional
tenor.
What he was instead
was an expressive lyric tenor with a
fine range, especially at the top where
his floated head voice was exceptionally
convincing. He was a most stylish exponent
of the French tradition, one that embraces
a good number of Basque and Corsican
singers in addition to Villabella. His
Mignon is open, lyric, and splendid
throughout the range though with maybe
too much of a lyric bleat but his Mireille
is ardent and expressive and fully commanding.
In Rigoletto’s Comme la plume au
vent – almost everything’s
sung in French – his ardour is almost
up there with Georges Thill whilst his
technique is quite unruffled by Messager’s
Fortunio extract. He is plangency itself
in Manon – marvellously floated head
voice with admirable breath control
(even at the top there is no sense of
strain) – and he is noble and virile
in Massenet’s Grisélidis.
The voix mixte he so effortlessly
deploys (essentially head voice and
falsetto) is emblematically French and
wonderful to hear – though arguably
we do hear it rather a lot. He has plenty
of power in reserve throughout and turns
on the stylish ease in Offenbach though
even he can’t do much with the wobbly
old band that accompanies him in Le
Jongleur de Notre-Dame. His Roi
d’Ys is notable for richness of
execution, latent power, consummate
style and portamenti on light head notes
whilst his Opéra-Comique credentials
are on show in Suzanne. He makes a good
team with Baugé in the Rossini
– his partner starts rather unsteadily
but soon warms up though in his solo
Rossini, whilst his divisions are special,
he can be a mite superficial. But we
can enjoy the two Spanish items for
their idiomatic control.
On some of the copies
there are minor problems; blasting,
some thumps and bumps. But I would persist
beyond them to appreciate this lyrically
elevated and tonally admirable exponent
of a vanished performing style. The
notes consist of a bare paragraph of
biographical details, in French and
English. Try the singing though.
Jonathan Woolf