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"One of the Brightest Stars in the Tenor-Heavens” |
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A Special Affinity for French Repertoire
Due to the brilliance of his upper register, mastery of dynamic shading and the dramatic, dark coloration of his freely ringing voice, from the onset of his career Ikaia-Purdy has enjoyed great success in the great lyric-dramatic roles of the French repertoire. In addition to serving to introduce him to the MET audience, HOFFMANN was the role of his triumphant Geneva Opera debut. Further significant French repertoire debuts have included CARMEN (José) in the Holland Festival under Riccardo Chailly, FAUST - the role of his celebrated debuts at both the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, and Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires; JÉRUSALEM, first under Mehta in Vienna, and later for his Carnegie Hall debut under Queler - one critic noting that in the great aria of Gaston "he brought the house down with his two high Cs". He went on to debut this rarely heard opera in both the Dresden Opera Festival and with the Frankfurt Opera. And, on New Year's Day 2004 he appeared from the Leipzig Gewandhaus in an internationally telecast French Opera Gala. Under the baton of Fabio Luisi, Ikaia-Purdy joined Dilber and Nadia Krasteva in a program of arias and duets from WERTHER, ROMEO et JULIETTE, HOFFMANN, LAKME and PECHEURS de PERLES. The Leipzig Volkszeitung review gets right to the point: "Great tenors are rare; Leipzig has now experienced one."
 Neither brilliant high tones, nor voice alone, account for Ikaia-Purdy's extraordinary success in the French repertoire. The language itself has been a critical, even determinative factor in his success. The Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung spoke to this aspect of the tenor's art when he again sang JÉRUSALEM in 2003: "The fact that the male soloists delivered their French text at a minimally adequate level of understandability would not have been so apparent, had Keith Ikaia-Purdy not set such a high standard. The fact that one was able to understand every one of the tenor's words, and indeed, that even in the ensembles with the full orchestral accompaniment he was nevertheless able to communicate the slightest of emotional nuances, is simply fantastic!"
WERTHER too has been a role long associated with Ikaia-Purdy; for in addition to being his "breakout role" in Hamburg, it introduced him to the operas of Leipzig, Stuttgart, Bucharest and Stockholm. Of the Stockholm debut, L'OPERA praised "una voce splendidissima." Later this season he returns to WERTHER in a new Robert Tannenbaum production in Karlsruhe. Finally in Vienna - where WERTHER has recently been added to his repertoire list, he has scored a great personal and artistic triumph in Rossini's impossible GUILLAUME TELL, appeared in Donizetti's FAVORITE - and most recently made his first appearance in the utterly complete 5 Act French original version of DON CARLOS. And finally, in February 2007 he will make his Barcelona, Liceu debut in a concert dedicated to Verdi's French Grand Opera- thus neatly combining his gifts as both a Verdian and French- schooled tenor.
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