Tenors on parade
Russia’s leading opera voices come to Cyprus this week with guest star Antonios Koutroupis
An exceptional series of concerts this week may make you reconsider some conventional notions about enjoying opera music. The idea generally goes that most serious opera singers are confined to being enjoyed by the elite and are themselves overweight and aren’t anybody you would consider starting a harmless fanatical obsession with. With the recent arrival in Cyprus of the Russian Tenors Parade, you can think again. The group is the creation of top Russian tenor Vladislav Piavko, and their star is Antonios Koutroupis a young tenor who is more than worthy of candidacy for the Opera-lite group Il Divo, currently storming the charts. Moreover, the group are highly respected in the classical music world and offer an act that cannot be rivalled in terms of passion and charisma.
Picture this. It’s 2003. Music-company moguls schedule a board meeting to brain-storm a new concept for a band. The head honcho addresses the meeting. “We need a new plan boys, we need to make classical music sexy! Hey, I know, we’ll get the best looking bunch of classical singers to make a group, slick, smooth, chiselled jaw and we’ve got an act.” And hey-presto, opera-pop Il Divo, currently storming Europe’s pop charts, was born.
What the music executives didn’t bear in mind, was that four chiselled jaws, and sets of Italian suits, do not a respected opera clan make. Sure housewives have a respectable pin up and so too armies of schoolgirls can now obsess over pin-ups whose lyrics are devoid of expletives, but the four boys hailing from the US, Switzerland, France and Spain, are just like most manufactured acts. Their songs, while heart-rending and polished, lack passion and warmth.
If you like your opera delivered with passion, panache and the promise of seduction, home grown tenor Antonios Koutroupis is your man. Koutroupis is every bit the candidate for Il Divo, scandalously good looking, confident, oozing panache, and yet he is the real deal. A highly enthused tenor hailed by St.Petersburg’s discerning music press as “a great and explosive” talent.
Recently, the Evening St. Petersburg said that his “unrivalled lyricism and penetrating fiery temperament brought the audience to a passionate frenzy and unstoppable applause, something unusual and rare for the demanding Russian audiences.”
This week he performs in three concerts with the prestigious Russian Tenors Parade, headed by Piavko. It comprises five to twelve world-class tenors, soloists from top opera houses like the Bolshoi and Mariinsky, plus one pianist. They will deliver a programme of operatic excerpts and Neapolitan songs (Italian Romantic) in a humorous and entertaining way, at the same time maintaining a quality that would satisfy connoisseurs. For the Cyprus concerts Piavko’s group comprises five tenors, one pianist and Antonios Koutroupis.
Born in Nicosia, Koutroupis started lessons in Byzantine music at the age of eleven and at seventeen he received the qualification of Head Chanter. In 2000 he enrolled in the department of opera studies at the Conservatory of St Petersburg while receiving tutelage from baritone Costas Paschalis in Athens and the American Professor Robin Rice in Italy. Now he is in his fifth and final year at the St Petersburg Conservatory under the guidance of tenor Lev Morozov and is in big demand in Moscow and St Petersburg as a soloist.
The concerts will have well-known arias (meaning song in Italian) and romantic songs from all over Europe performed in their original language. But for Koutroupis, who speaks Russian, Italian, English, Greek, and also sings in French and German, language isn’t important in opera music.
“It’s the aura of the person that conveys meaning,” he says. “The opera singer, is not just a singer, he is a true actor.”
At only 27, Koutroupis is young for a tenor, and particularly one performing alongside Russia’s top tenor. To have reached so far so young he has committed himself to years of arduous practice and study.
“Every time we sing a five-minute song, the audience doesn’t realise that those few minutes means years of agony, pressure, disappointment, stress, research, concentration,” he says.
“That work deserves to be treated with integrity. Maria Callas for example puts everything of herself into her work, I try to do this every time I sing. Callas makes you cry, think, impress you, express you, fulfil you because she sings with her heart and soul. Jose Carerras is another.”
When Jose Carerras performed in Nicosia five years ago Koutroupis had the opportunity to meet him. He says, “I met him for about two minutes, it was like meeting a monster. I had two minutes to talk to him. He is a very passionate and humble person. I told him I would try to win his vocal competition so I could get a chance to sing with him. He said, “I hope so.” I’ve seen a lot of his work. You cannot forget his arias, they are like Callas, they are burnt inside your soul.”
The Russian Tenor Parade perform this week in Limassol, Larnaca and Nicosia.
Russian Tenor Parade
Under the direction of Vladimir Pyavko with guest star Antonis Koutroupis. January 17. Nicosia Municipal Theatre. 8.30pm. £15. Tel: 99-487603/99-6374790
January 18. Larnaca Municipal Theatre. 8.30pm. £15. Tel: 99-487603/99-6374790
January 20. Rialto Theatre, 19 Andrea Drousioti St, Limassol. 8.30pm. £15. Tel: 25-343900/ 77-777745
