Ivan Kusnjer - Baritone Operatic Recital
1. Ruggiero Leoncavallo (1857–1919) - I Pagliacci (1892)
Si puo? Signori, signore (Tonio), Prolog
2. Gioacchino Rossini (1792–1868) - The Barber of Seville (1816)
Largo al factotum della citta (Figaro), Act 1
3. Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848) - Lucia di Lammermoor (1835)
Apressati, Lucia (Enrico, Lucia), Act 2
4. Richard Wagner (1813–1883) - Tannhäuser (1845)
Wie Todesahnung (Wolfram), Act 3
5. Heinrich Marschner (1795–1861) - The Vampire (1828)
Ha!, noch einen ganzen Tag (Ruthven), Act 1
6. Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) - Il trovatore (1853)
Tutto e deserto (Luna), Act 2
7. Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) - Don Carlos (1867)
Per me giunto – O Carlo, ascolta (Posa), Act 3
8. Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) - Rigoletto (1851)
Pari siamo (Rigoletto), Act 1
9. Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) - Rigoletto (1851)
Tutte le feste al tempio (Gilda a Rigoletto), Act 2
10. Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) - Otello (1882)
Vanne! La tua meta gia vedo (Jago), Act 2
11. Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) - Falstaff (1893)
E sogno, o realta (Ford), Act 2
12. Umberto Giordano (1867–1948) - Andrea Chénier (1896)
Nemico della patria (Gérard), Act 3
13. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) - The Queen of Spades (1890)
Postojtě na odno mgnovenije – Ja vas ljublju (Yeletsky), Act 2
14. Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884) - The Devil's Wall (1882)
Jen jediná mne ženy krásná tvář (Vok Vítkovic), Act 1
15. Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) - The Cunning Little Vixen (1924)
Je to pohádka, či pravda? (The Forester, Frog), Act 3
Ivan Kusnjer - baritone [1-15]
Božena Effenberková - soprano [3, 9], Tomáš Klimo - soprano [15]
Prague Smetana Theatre Orchestra [1-3, 5, 7, 9, 10-13], Prague State Opera Orchestra [8, 14-15], Brno State Theatre Opera Orchestra [4, 6]
Conductors Petr Vronský [1-2, 5, 7, 13], Jan Štych [3, 6, 8-12, 14-15], Jiří Pinkas [4]
Recorded at Czechoslovak Radio Studios in Prague 1986 (1, 2, 5, 7, 10-13), 1990 (3, 9) and in Brno 1982 (4), 1981 (6) and at Czech Radio Studios in Prague 1996 (8, 14-15)
Sung in original languages
Ivan Kusnjer
Stage creations of the baritone Ivan Kusnjer have ranked among the highlights of the premier Czech opera house throughout the last three decades. Beyond that, he has been no less diligent in dedicating his gift of musicality and extraordinary promptitude for studying new material coupled with a wealth of experience to concert hall audiences, and to the up-and-coming generation of young singers as a teacher at the Prague Academy of Music and Drama. His career has encompassed all of Europe's major music centres, ranging from London, Paris and Berlin, to Brussels, Hamburg, Gothenburg, Reykjavik and Lisbon, to Madrid, Venice, Milan and Salzburg. Overseas, he has appeared in another three continents: in Canada and the United States, in Brazil, Israel, Hong Kong and Japan.
Underlying Ivan Kusnjer's remarkable list of triumphs is not only his voice talent, but also his immaculate feeling for singing technique and impeccable preparation. He studied voice in the class of Professor Theodor Šrubař at the Prague Academy of Music and Drama, and subsequently furthered his schooling in Siena and Milan. After winning awards from the singing competitions in Karlovy Vary, Sofia, Geneva and Vercelli, he then, from the year 1977, proceeded to refine his operatic-stage skills in Ostrava, and in Brno. Eventually, his joining the company of soloists at the National Theatre and then at the State Opera in Prague came as a natural outcome of his previous preparation, as well as an opportunity for the rapid launch of a formidable creative trajectory.
Both on the operatic stage and on the concert platform, he has invariably fascinated listeners by his arching cantilena rendition, clear and cultured enunciation and faultless feeling for the poetic content of the sung text, compounded by a dazzling assurance in the delivery of high registers. In concert halls, he has cultivated a song and cantata repertoire ranging from Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms, to Mahler, Busoni, Prokofiev and Zemlinsky, to Bartók, Honegger and Orff. Moreover, he has systematically championed music by Czech composers, including most notably Dvořák, Foerster, Janáček, Novák, Suk and Martinů, as well as contemporary works by Hanuš, Slavický, Kvěch, Tichý and Bodorová.
A truly versatile singer though he may be, his mainstay has always been the operatic stage, where he has created a formidable gallery of roles in both the Czech and international repertoires. In the former, Ivan Kusnjer has been offered sterling opportunities in the operas of Smetana (as Tausendmark, Vladislav, Krušina, Tomeš, Master Mason, Radovan, or Vok), Dvořák (as Roderich, Bohuš, Hunter, Gamekeeper, or Muezin), and Janáček (as Přemysl, Lhotský, Mill Foreman, Harašta, Forester, Kuligin, Poet, Prus, Čekunov, Small Prisoner, Šiškov, or Gorjančikov). He has to his credit dedicated creations in rarely performed operas, such as Myslivečekś Abramo ed Isacco, Škroup's The Sea Geus, Šebor's The Templars in Moravia, Rozkošný's The Rapids of Saint John, Novák's Karlštejn, Pauer's Swan Song, and Eben's Jeremiah. Of his creations in the international repertoire, he has earned acclaim most notably as Mozartś Guglielmo, Almaviva and Papageno, and Rossiniś Figaro. He has likewise excelled as Verdi's Macbeth, Rigoletto, Germont, Luna, Renato, Posa, Carlos, Amonasro, Iago, and both Ford and Falstaff, as Leoncavallo's Tonio and Silvio, and as Pucciniś Marcello, Scarpia and Michele. He has also performed the leading baritone parts in Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila, Wagner's Parsifal, Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier and Die schweigsame Frau, and in Ferrero' La conquista.
He has worked with many leading stage directors - a roster featuring prominently David Pountney and Robert Wilson - and conductors, including Mackerras, Albrecht, Baudo, Viotti, Harnoncourt, Luisi, Camberling, Gardiner, Neumann, Košler, Pešek, Gregor, Kout, Mácal, Pinkas, Bělohlávek and Netopil. Ivan Kusnjerś extensive discography is dominated, along with song recitals (Dvořák, Foerster, Janáček, Eben), by complete opera sets of Dalibor, Vanda, Dimitrij, Rusalka, šárka, Osud, and The Excursions of Mr Brouček; and complete radio recordings of Iphigénie en Tauride, Eugene Onegin, Armida, Mozart and Salieri, Betrothal in a Monastery, The Flames, Twelfth Night, and Copernicus. To date, he has been invited to feature in recording projects of Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Chandos, Orfeo, Naxos, Marco Polo, Panton, and Supraphon. Ivan Kusnjer's accounts of the international repertoire, however, have so far remained reposited in music archives.
In recognition of his outstanding achievements on stage, Ivan Kusnjer received the most prestigious Czech theatre distinction, Thalia Award, on three occasions: in 1994, for Prologue and Tonio in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci; in 1997, for the King in Peter Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad King; and in 2001, for Vok Vítkovic in Smetana's The Devilś Wall. In 2001, he was awarded the European Gustav Mahler Prize, and in 2002 he was part of the creative team that won two Grammy award nominations for the recording of Janáček's Šárka.
(Radioservis 2012)
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