The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: The opera world starts 2015 with a loss. Promising American tenor Carlo Scibelli is dead at 50.

ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale, held from 12:15 to 1 p.m. in the Landmark Auditorium (below) of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, features sopranos Susan Day and Rebekah Demaree with clarinetist Corey Mackey and pianist Sharon Jensen in music by Barbara Harbach, Lori Laitmen, Libby Larsen, Gioachino Rossini and Franz Schubert.

By Jacob Stockinger

The New Year is still young, but already the list of losses has begun.

Here is a link to the list of classical musicians, performers and composers, that we lost in 2014:

https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2015/01/11/classical-music-can-you-name-the-20-famous-classical-musicians-who-died-in-2014-npr-remembers-them-and-the-ear-celebrates-them-with-the-german-requiem-by-johannes-brahms/

The promising American tenor Carlo Scibello, who was born in California but lived in New York City, has died at the age of 50, a few days after his birthday. He died in New York City on Jan. 9 of complications from pancreatitis.

It is enough to make The Ear ask: Is there a curse on promising tenors, the most high-profile male singers?

Remember the “new Pavarotti” –- Italian tenor Salvatore Licitra (below)? He died in a motor scooter accident in Sicily in 2011.

Then the promising Mexican tenor Rolando Villazon – another candidate to be the “new Pavarotti” saw his meteoric career interrupted when he had surgery for throat problems, especially a congenital cyst on a vocal chord. He seems on the mend now, but it is hard on a career to lose momentum and then try to recapture it. The opera world is a very competitive one.

And now the tenor Carlo Scibelli is dead at the age of 50 – an age that is younger than it sounds given how long it takes for the human voice to mature and for a world-class operatic career to develop. He had a big voice, as you can hear in the YouTube video at the bottom.

Of course, some other tenors, including the promising Stephen Costello (below, in a photo by Dario Acosta) who has performed at the Madison Opera as well as the Metropolitan Opera, seems to be doing fine. He just keeps getting bigger and bigger gigs with more and more visibility and critical acclaim.

Here is a link, with a good sound sample, to the news report about Carlo Scibelli by famed British critic Norman Lebrecht (below), who has the reputation of being cranky and sometimes mean but who is unquestionably well-connected, often gets major scoops and writes a well-known blog called “Slipped Disc”:

http://slippedisc.com/2015/01/tragic-death-of-international-tenor-aged-50/