NEW YORK — New York City’s classical vocal-music season began on a high note — quite a few and impressive ones — with a local debut recital Sept. 10 by one of Italy’s established countertenor stars, Carlo Vistoli. The 39-year-old singer and capable pianist Giulio Zappa pleased an industry-heavy audience at the Park Avenue Armory’s Board of Officers Room, an intimate time capsule of a space with wooden walls and military portraits that always make this reviewer feel transported to the second act of Strauss’ Arabella.
The program opened well with two Purcell standards, “Music for a While” and “Sweeter than Roses,” the territory of countertenors from Alfred Deller onwards. Vistoli showed his fine control of breath and line, plus — in the second song — fleet, unaspirated coloratura. His English here was quite credibly pointed, with only occasional overlatinate vowel sounds.
Two beautifully done Handel opera selections followed: not arias the composer crafted for either castratos or mezzo-sopranos. Atalanta‘s “Care selve” (soprano) and Semele‘s “Where’er you walk” (tenor) both showed Vistoli’s stylistic mastery and precise dynamic control.
Zappa duly dispatched Rossini’s late-career “Une caresse à ma femme” as elegant salon music, an apt tone he also adopted for his second offering, Ottorino Respighi’s listing “Valse Caressante,” the kind of lilting piece one imagines Nino Rota grew up hearing.
Even Mozart’s best songs are rarely memorable, and a kind of timbral sameness set in: Vistoli is a very expressive artist musically and facially, but the voice is not overrich in different colors. His French in “Dans un bois solitaire” was serviceable, though miles better than the Franco Corelli–Mirella Freni level of yore.
Beethoven’s “In questa tomba oscura” was nicely and earnestly rendered. Schubert’s iconic “Der Tod und das Mädchen” proved a pronounced success, the evocation of Death’s steely confidence eerily rendered, down to the written low D many avoid.
One song apiece from the three leading bel canto composers began the second half, starting with a tonally full account of Bellini’s elegaic “Vaga luna.” At several junctures, Vistoli’s selection of material seemed to pay tribute not to previous countertenors but to Marilyn Horne, the path-breaking performer of coloratura contralto repertoire.
The Rossini number was “La légende de Marguerite,” an adaptation of the repeated, melancholy canzone “Una volta c’era un re” sung by Angelina in La cenerentola, one of Horne’s signature roles; she first sang it at age 22 in 1957 and kept it in her repertoire at least through 1982 at San Francisco Opera. Some brassier countertenors like Jeffrey Gall and Franco Fagioli have more approached Horne’s heroic mode, but Vistoli echoes her commitment to command of breath.
Three of Reynaldo Hahn’s Venetian-dialect numbers followed, the gorgeous, arpeggiated, punch-drunk “La barcheta” more suited to Vistoli’s instrument than the conversational “Che pecà,” with its repeated downward leaps. Vistoli’s English came up wanting only in the penultimate scheduled selection, Stephen Foster’s “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair.” This 1854 charmer — an absolute Horne recital fixture — demands a kind of rhetorical simplicity and command of 19th-century prosody (“Many were the blithe birds that warbled them o’er”) that makes it perilous turf for non-native speakers.
But the printed program ended with a heartfelt, pure-toned, and beautifully graded “Somewhere” from West Side Story. This anthemic number, written by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim for Reri Grist (born 1932), then on the verge of an outstanding international classical career, was taken at the first Broadway revival (1980) by Harolyn Blackwell just before she entered Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Young Artist program.
The song was awarded in the composer’s own 1985 studio recording to none other than Marilyn Horne. Its theme of hope and forgiveness has taken on resonance in commemorating 9/11. (The night after Vistoli’s recital, on the anniversary of the tragedy itself, the clear, stylistically versatile soprano Francesca Federico sang a radiant version at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s utterly winning balcony concert with pianist Derrick Goff and the alert string quartet ETHEL.) Clearly touched, the New York crowd rewarded Vistoli’s traversal with grateful applause.
It’s no backward compliment to say that the four (!) encores were the strongest and most revealing portion of the evening, making more evident the appeal Vistoli’s sound might have in theatrical performance.
The singer introduced the first as a tribute to the late Pierre Audi, the Armory’s remarkable artistic director from 2015-25 and the man who had invited Vistoli to New York for these recitals. They had worked together on a production of Alcina in Rome in March 2025, two months before Audi’s death: a peak experience for the singer.
Here, Vistoli offered Ruggero’s slow-burn “Verdi prati” with great evenness and feeling, trills at the ready, as throughout his Baroque selections.
Conductor Michele Mariotti cast Vistoli as Rossini’s Tancredi in Rome in May 2026, a performance hailed in the September 2026 issue of Opera (with Opera News) by Lorenzo Fiorito: “His timbre introduced a quality of supernatural fragility into the character, making Tancredi less a heroic warrior than a wounded, hunted figure. The vocal control was extraordinary: velvety middle register, seemingly effortless high notes, impeccable legato, and above all an intelligence of phrasing in which every ornament appeared motivated by thought and feeling rather than display.”
In this recital, Vistoli offered Tancredi’s “Di tanti palpiti” with impressive passagework and a well-executed yet tasteful high cadenza at the end.
The third encore was Orfeo’s classic C-major lament “Che farò senza Euridice,” which, if inevitably brighter-toned than familiar recorded versions like those of Shirley Verrett and Bernarda Fink (and Horne!), showed a sense of theatrical timing. Best of all came a lullaby arranged by Francesco Balilla Pratella in the dialect of Vistoli’s native Emilia Romagna. It was absolutely transfixing, vocally radiant over a wide range, and offered with deep feeling. Artists so often shine brightest in the music they grew up with. One hopes New York will see and hear Vistoli in some fully staged or concert Baroque operas very soon.
Next up at this address: American tenor Ben Bliss with pianist Christopher Allen (Oct. 9 and 11) and the excellent Omani-born mezzo-soprano Deepa Johnny with pianist Jonathan Ware (Nov. 19 and 21).
