Dmitri Hvorostovsky Stars as Simon Boccanegra on Met Saturday Matinee Broadcast

Dmitri Hvorostovsky
St. Louis Public Radio will carry the Met Opera broadcast of Giuseppe Verdi's Simon Boccanegra on their HD channel, KWMU-3 beginning at 12 noon. Approximate running time 3 hours with intermission at approximately 2:31 p.m.

The Met web site says:

Dmitri Hvorostovsky takes on the landmark title role of Simon Boccanegra for the first time at the Met. James Levine leads the Met forces, including Barbara Frittoli, Ramón Vargas, and Ferruccio Furlanetto.

Anthony Tommasini said in a New York Times review of the January 20, 2011, performance:

On Thursday night Simon Boccanegra returned to the Met as Verdi intended it, with a baritone in the title role, and a great one: Dmitri Hvorostovsky. With his distinctive dark vocal colorings, the Siberian-born Mr. Hvorostovsky is not a classic Italianate baritone. But this role ideally suits him, and he was a magnificent Simon.

All in all, it was a great night at the Met. James Levine conducted a majestic, vibrant and insightful performance. The undervalued Italian soprano Barbara Frittoli, as Maria (known as Amelia), was in peak form; the formidable Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto, as Fiesco, gave a master class in Verdi singing; and there was a notable Met debut by an appealing and handsome 42-year-old Sicilian tenor, Roberto De Biasio. He replaced Ramón Vargas, who was ill, as Amelia’s lover, Gabriele Adorno. Formerly a professional flutist, Mr. De Biasio has been singing for only four years, to increasing success. There were rough patches and some unevenness in his performance, but he has a virile voice and potential.

An Unamplified Voice, in reviewing the same performance, praises the Met for presenting, "An excellent night [of] Verdi singing and playing." However, the blog's author notes:

Dmitri Hvorostovsky sang the eponymous former corsair beautifully, but I'm not convinced that Boccanegra plays to his real strengths. For all his exquisite shape of phrase, Hvorostovsky is most compelling when some dangerously strong emotion (usually rage) explodes from his usual civilized surface -- witness his Onegin, or di Luna, or Renato. Boccanegra, for all his pride and checkered past, spends most of his onstage time conciliating passions, not indulging them, and only his reminiscence of the sea near the end seems to engage Hvorostovsky in full.