In Latest of Several Cancellations, Tenor Rolando Villazón Pulls Out of Salzburg Festival

By Matthew Westphal
August 6, 2007

Tenor Rolando Villazón has withdrawn from his scheduled appearances in two gala concerts with his colleague and mentor Plácido Domingo at the Salzburg Festival this coming week. The performances, on August 9 and 12, feature a program of selections from various zarzuelas with Spanish conductor Jesús López Cobos leading the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra.

A statement released by the Festival today said that Villazón withdrew due to a "long-term illness" ("einer längerfristigen Erkrankung"). Stepping in for him will be soprano Ana María Martínez, with whom Domingo performed just the night before last at the Ravinia Festival's annual fundraising gala. "I feel for Rolando," said Domingo in the Festival statement, "and it is my wish that he sing with us again soon. But I look forward to the concert with Ana María Martínez. It has always been my wish to sing with her one day in Salzburg."

Of Villazón's withdrawal, Festival president Helga Rabl-Stadler told the Austrian national broadcaster ORF that the tenor "is suffering from an artistic crisis, and we are suffering along with him." And Jürgen Fimm, the Festival's artistic director, told ORF, he wanted very much to sing with us and yesterday gave a concert in Trondheim [Norway] to see if [the voice] was working. Unfortunately, it wasn't working."

This is the second high-profile cancellation Villazón has been obliged to make in less than a month: He was unable to sing in three performances of a gala program with Netrebko, Elina Garanca and Ludovic Tézier at the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden on July 28 and 31 and August 3. (He was replaced by Ramón Vargas.) Villazón did perform four gala concerts with Netrebko in the middle of July, however, in Hamburg, Rome, Mannheim and Munich. The pair — often referred to as "opera's dream couple" for their onstage chemistry — have four more concerts scheduled for later this month, in Cologne, Halle, Berlin and Stuttgart (the first two of those in stadiums). As of today, the website of those concerts' promoter, DEAG classics, shows no change in plans for those performances.