Second-rate singer?

I blogged about watching a wonderful production of Eugene Onegin on TV the other week. What I didn't say was that the singer who sang Lensky didn't exactly set the production on fire. I thought maybe it was just the transmission that made me miss the perfection of his singing.

When I was getting a YouTube video of an aria from Eugene Onegin to put up on my blog so you could hear how wonderful it was, I noticed a commenter saying how crap the guy who sang the Lensky role was.

The other night at Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House in London, I kept looking at the singer who the secondary male role -- Don Ottavio. What was it about him that looked familiar?

At the intermission, I told my family what I thought. "I think that's the same guy who sang Lensky," I announced. "The one who some people thought wasn't very good."
My daughter was impressed at my celebrity spotting. (It's one of my big talents -- I can spot well-known actors in their first or last role -- it doesn't matter how age has touched them -- I can spot some quirk or facial feature about them and ID them correctly almost every time. I watch people that way.)

Then I mentioned his name -- Ramon Vargas.

"That's him," my daughter said, amazed. "I saw his name in the programme. It's the same guy."

As we watched Don Giovanni, we noticed that Vargas didn't exactly set this production on fire either (although there were plenty of flames onstage when Don Giovanni was pulled into hell at the end of the opera).

Today I was reading a review of the opera in the Times, and the reviewer had these harsh words:

"As for Vargas, he has no place in a stylish Mozart ensemble. To go all the way to Mexico for such a second-rate artist is inexplicable."

Ouch! I sort of feel sorry for him now. What must it be like to read things like this about yourself?