Rolando Villazon gets a job
NewsThe vanishing Mexican tenor has been named artistic director of Salzburg’s Mozarteum Foundation.
He was already director of its January Mozart Weeks.
Villazon, 49, is assembling a second career from admin titles and directing assignments. He was once the rising tenor of the post-Domingo age.
I wonder whether the 7th of the 7 operas in the Villazón / Nézet-Séguin / Baden-Baden / DG / Mozart project (Idomeneo) will ever get made now …
jobs for the boys……..
Villazon’s mental health ‘ups and downs’ are well documented – perhaps explaining his sporadic performing career. When on form though he was an invigorating and vital artist who could move the listener, as he did for me in Werther at ROHCG c.10yrs ago. I hope now he is ‘collecting’ these other jobs that he does not over-stretch himself and that all is well with him.
He was an A-natural tenor in a B-flat world. Still, he was good to have around; something always happened when he performed, and I hope his managerial gig(s) work out for him.
He did what he could as an opera singer, and that’s it. Now he only sings mexican traditional music, like he did in the last Mozartwoche. It is in the leadership of the Mozart Week that he has proved that he lacks the preparation, knowledge, and training to be artistic director of anything. I guess that Artistic Director of the Mozarteum Stiftung is just an honorary position…
He’s the only tenor I think of who sang both romantic Italian opera and Vivaldi,– always exciting, sometimes over the top.