Andreas Scholl revisited in Partenope

Last Friday (October 24th) I attended Francisco Negrin´s new staging of Partenope at the Royal Danish Opera for the second time, as I also was present at the premiere.

During the entire run, the performances have been plagued by illness - for the first couple of performances Andreas Scholl sang through a cold, and immediately thereafter Tuva Semmingsen was replaced by Trine Bastrup Møller due to illness. Finally on the Friday´s performance (the second-last of the run) all singers were well.

As I skipped over him at the premiere, where he was indisposed, I´ll just write a couple of words about Andreas Scholl, now where he is well:

First of all, Andreas Scholl really is a remarkable singer, with star quality as only a handful of his colleagues, regardless of voice type. Technically he is superb, with a quite distinguished sound I have heard describe as "white". Furthermore his coloratura technique is simply stunning. Last, but not least, he has a wonderfully masculine presence on stage, despite his part, Arsace, being something of a wimp. And he looks rather dashing, not to forget..

Much praise also to Christophe Dumaux, who has a somewhat deeper and also, it seemed, bigger voice than Andreas Scholl.

And to the rest of the team and the director etc., who performed at the same high level as in the premiere making 3 hours of Händel fly away.