the times | Monday December 6 2021 9
arts
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD POHLEbaritone, I say. “Bergonzi did, Corelli
did. I think maybe the more robust
tenor voices just take that little bit
longer to kind of ‘set up’.”
The moment of revelation came
with his teacher (and still his vocal
counsellor) Mark Wildman at the
Royal Academy of Music (RAM),
who was taking him through his
vocal exercises.
“Normally we’d go to a kind of high
baritone-ish place, but one day he just
went one semitone more. And then
again and again, and again.. .” When
he found himself with a high C and
C-sharp that did not crack, the die
was cast. “I think deep down I always
thought I was a tenor.”
After winning a prestigious
competition in Spain, De Tommaso
quit his postgrad course at the RAM
one year early to get more hands-on
experience at the Munich Opera
studio. And then it was straight into
that 2019 Covent Garden debut.
Wildman himself has nurtured
many British tenors but none like this
one. “You have to go back 50 years to
find another one with his attributes,”
he tells me. “The sort of voice that
Freddie has — they come by only
once or twice in a generation.”
So what has made them so rare?
Wildman’s intriguing theory is that it’sabout physique. With his stocky build,
De Tommaso is more like the postwar
generation of men who, Wildman
says, “worked in mills, mines,
industry”. He contrasts that with the
English tenors of today. “I’ve taught
many myself, from Oxbridge
colleges... a lot of them don’t seem to
have the sheer physical strength that
the heavier tenor voice needs to
sustain and support the sound.”
De Tommaso’s devotion to a vintage
era of tenors is more than skin-deep.
“The style of singing is different today
than then,” the singer says. “It’s a very
distinct change. I’m not sure why. But
I like to try to sing in that more
old-fashioned way.” The principles
of the bel-canto technique are his
watchword: “Always focusing on
making the most beautiful sound.
Never using any force or push. Singing
on the breath, with true Italianate
vowels.” Well, it sounds easy...
His first Cavaradossi would have
been at the Royal Opera House, but
because of a Covid cancellation he
jumped into his first Tosca at the
Bolshoi in Moscow two months ago,
for which they allotted him an
ungenerous two days of rehearsal.
Still, he survived it enough to even
enjoy it and learn some tips. Before
Cavaradossi even blinks the character
is basically into his treacherous first
aria, Recondita Armonia. “So I sing
the aria in full, five minutes before I
go on stage. Just to myself, out of an
open window.”
Yes, De Tommaso wants to start to
tick off the big roles, but says he would
like to get started on Verdi with hisearlier, less performed operas such as
Ernani, I due Foscari and Il corsaro —
connoisseurs’ picks, all of them. He
insists that under Wildman’s guidance
he will pace himself.
“From very early he [Wildman] said,
‘Take your time, do not rush, if you
want to sing for 40, 50 years. Study the
parts well. Don’t just go from city to
city and never have a gap.’ ” He is,
however, pretty much itinerant at the
moment, saving his pennies and when
not working abroad dividing his time
between his mother’s house in Kent
and his girlfriend’s west London flat.
She is the soprano Alexandra
Oomens, currently starring in English
National Opera’s HMS Pinafore. Alas,
they have no repertoire in common
but they do like to sing the odd
Donizetti duet at home for fun.
There is a lot riding on the success
of this rare beast, the British Italianate
tenor. “I hope he has a long and
rewarding career in the right
repertoire, and that he is not misled,”
Wildman says, with some gravity. As
for his protégé, he is still bouncing off
the walls at how far he has come. “I
just love this job so much,” De
Tommaso says. “I have scores and
scores of friends who work in offices,
and I see them at the pub, and I ask
them, ‘How’s work?’ and they reply,
you know, it’s just ‘work’.
“But for me it’s never just work,
mister. Entertaining people, getting
to sing in the best places in the world.
It’s epic.”He’s from
Kent but
sings like
Caruso
this year. Next spring he will make his
La Scala debut as Maurizio in Cilea’s
Adriana Lecouvreur, and is tickled by
the fact that another golden-age idol,
Enrico Caruso, created that role in the
same city at exactly the same age.
He says he is “very proud” to fly the
British flag when he performs in Tosca.
That said, as his name suggests he has
Italian heritage too, joint citizenship
and speaks the language pretty well.
When he sings at La Scala, where the
notorious “loggionisti” in the cheap
seats can sometimes give debutants a
rough ride, he says he hopes that “they
will look at me as an Italian, not an
English person, because I think they’re
more kind towards Italians”.
De Tommaso’s father, who died
when he was 18, came from Puglia. His
mother came from Tunbridge Wells
and there his parents ran an Italian
restaurant (“fine dining, not pizza
pasta”), and when De Tommaso was
old enough he worked in the bar. His
dad’s favourite music was Maria Callas
and Pavarotti. “In the car and the
restaurant, he always, always had
them. So it’s kind of the soundtrack of
my childhood.”
He sang from an early age even if no
one else in his family did; the relatives
in Puglia are the least operatically
inclined, apparently. He joined the
school choir at his prep school at five,
getting individual singing lessons there
from the age of eight and continuing
as a treble well into his teens. He sang
in the chapel choir at Tonbridge
School until his voice broke, quite
late, at 16. He then sang as a bass,
rising eventually to a baritone, which
is what he enrolled as at the Royal
Academy of Music after a short,
unsatisfying stint studying languages
at Bristol University.
Plácido Domingo started as aT
he last English bloke
to sing Cavaradossi in
Tosca at Covent
Garden was Charles
Craig, from Shoreditch
in east London, in
January 1963. Almost
60 years later, this
month a Fred from Tunbridge Wells in
Kent is ending a very long gap.
I’m sitting with Freddie De
Tommaso on the Royal Opera House’s
terrace overlooking Covent Garden
piazza as he talks about some of his
tenor heroes, idols since his teenage
years, and all renowned as great
Cavaradossis in Puccini’s opera. He is
much too young to have seen any of
them on stage: Luciano Pavarotti,
Carlo Bergonzi, Franco Corelli, Mario
del Monaco. “I always seem to be
harking back to the old days,” he
says, apologetically.
But then you would if you made the
sort of dark, powerful and somehow
wonderfully vintage sound that has
already landed this 29-year-old Royal
Academy graduate plum roles on
some of the world’s biggest stages.
With his penetrating stare, he even
looks as though he should be on the
cover of a classic opera LP, snapped in
sepia with a range of dramatic scarfs.
He has pretty much started as he
means to go on. De Tommaso’s first
professional role as a freelance artist
was at Covent Garden, when he sang
Cassio in Verdi’s Otello in December
- Despite the havoc then caused
by Covid, he sang a slew of new, big
roles at the Vienna State Opera (the
house continued performing virtually
throughout the crisis) including his
first Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly,
his first Macduff in Macbeth and his
first Don José in Carmen, and was
signed by Decca Classics in January
Freddie De Tommaso tells Neil Fisher
about following his heroes as the
tenor lead in the Royal Opera’s Tosca
Top: Freddie De
Tommaso, 29, on stage
at the Royal Opera
House. Above: with
Carlos Álvarez and
Andrés Presno in the
Royal Opera’s Otello
in 2019His sort of voice
— it comes by
once or twice in
a generation
Freddie De Tommaso
sings in Tosca at the
Royal Opera House,
London WC2, from
Dec 11 (roh.org.uk). His
debut album, Passione,
is out on DeccaCATHERINE ASHMORE