Album review: Andrea Bocelli’s voice thin in Puccini’s Turandot

Puccini: Turandot by Andrea Bocelli. Courtesy Decca Classics

Puccini's Turandot Andrea Bocelli Universal Music Classics/Decca/Sugar Two stars

The phenomenon known as Andrea Bocelli is at it again, releasing his 11th complete opera recording. This time he takes on the tenor role of Calaf in Puccini's final, unfinished opera, Turandot, best known for the stirring aria Nessun Dorma, which was immortalised by Bocelli's Italian compatriot Luciano Pavarotti.

With career sales exceeding 150 million records, Bocelli is as close to being ­critic-proof as any artist can be. So it may matter little to his adoring fans to point out that this is a misguided undertaking, exposing the folly of even the most expert pop vocalist trying to pose as an opera singer.

From his opening lines – “Padre, mio padre!” – Bocelli’s voice is thin and effortful. There is no heroic heft to his voice, a requirement in this demanding role. In the riddle scene, with its battle-of-the-high-notes duet, he is outmatched by American soprano Jennifer Wilson’s impressive Turandot.

Besides Wilson, who will be making a belated Metropolitan Opera debut next autumn as the icy Chinese princess, the cast includes Italian soprano Jessica Nuccio as slave girl Liu and a remarkable Ukrainian bass, Alexander Tsymbalyuk, who invests the role of Timur, Calaf’s father, with plangent tone.

Conductor Zubin Mehta, leading the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana, does a fine job of bringing out the dazzling colours and moods in Puccini’s most ambitious score. Still, anyone wanting to experience the opera for the first time would be better off with Mehta’s 1972 version, which starred Pavarotti, Joan Sutherland (who never sang the title role onstage), soprano Montserrat Caballe and bass Nicolai Ghiaurov.