Spanish tenor Xabier Anduaga makes a splash at the Met

When tenor Xabier Anduaga first auditioned for Riccardo Frizza, the conductor recalls that “he opened his mouth, and after two notes I understood I was in front of something special. It’s one of the voices you find every 15 or 20 years.” Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager, listened in astonishment when Anduaga made his house debut two season ago: “I was quite frankly blown away by his sound.” Anduaga has become a star throughout Europe at age 30, when many tenors are just starting to make their mark.

Now, he has introduced himself to American audiences in a big way, headlining the Met’s new production by Rolando Villazon of Bellini’s bel canto masterpiece “La Sonnambula,” which runs through Nov. 1. Anduaga stars opposite soprano Nadine Sierra, with Frizza conducting. The Oct.18 performance was broadcast live in HD to movie theatres around the world. To be sure, it’s an opera where the soprano gets the last word — and in Sierra’s case a rare high F — but Anduaga holds his own next to her virtuosity.

“His tenor flows in endless legato, capable of thinning to a silken thread or blooming into ringing, plush fortissimos,” Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim wrote in her New York Times review. Anduaga grew up in San Sebastian, Spain, where he started singing as a child. “We have a big tradition of chorus and amateur music in the Basque Country,” Anduaga said. He began as a boy soprano in church when he was 7, and at age 10 joined the Orfeón Donostiarra Choir, where he first encountered Elena Barbé, who was the choir’s voice teacher.

Once his voice changed he began to study singing seriously, but ran into trouble at the conservatory when his teachers wanted him to study roles that were too heavy for his light tenor voice at the time. “After a month I was, I can’t sing anymore,” Anduaga said. “I was pushing, not singing naturally.”

“So I called Elena — we were just friends at the time — and I said, ‘I need help!’ I restarted studying with her, and then eventually it became something different, and now we have a baby. We’ve been together 11 years.” In 2016, when he was just 21, he sang at the Rossini festival in Pesaro, Italy, while continuing his studies. Later that year he was in class when he got an urgent call from the opera company in Bilbao. “It was Friday, and they told me they had a cancellation and needed a tenor for Monday to sing Don Ramiro in Rossini’s ‘La Cenerentola,’” he recalled. “I called Elena and told her I can’t do it. All I knew was one aria and a duet. “She said, you have to. It’s a great opportunity. We have to study now. Say you’re sick and come home. She played the piano, and by Saturday morning I knew the whole role. She knows my potential better than I do.”

Through marriage and childbirth, Barbé has maintained her role as Anduaga’s coach, chief booster — and most discerning critic.

On a recent Friday night before a “Sonnambula” performance, the couple left 15-month-old Leonardo at their apartment with a babysitter and came to the Met together. While he prepared to go on, Barbé took a seat in the audience and began discreetly texting her husband during the performance. Every time he left the stage he would check his phone to read her comments.

“She’ll point out little things, like, ‘Pay attention to your breathing’ or, ‘Look out at the audience more, not so much at the conductor and orchestra,’” he said.

“She waits until there’s applause so she’s not disturbing her neighbor,” he said. “Sometimes people are looking at her. She doesn’t want to tell them she’s the wife of the tenor.”

As Anduaga’s voice continues to develop, he said, “it has gotten bigger and is taking on different colours.” Though he is sticking with the bel canto favorites, he is adding some lighter Verdi roles and venturing into French repertory — Massenet’s “Werther” and Gounod’s “Faust” and “Romeo et Juliette.”

Associated Press