Marco Berti

Marco Berti studied voice in Milano and made his debut as Pinkerton in 1990 in Cosenza. In 1991, he sang Don Ottavio at the Macerata festival and Guevara (in Cristoforo Colombo by Franchetti) in a concert performance in Frankfurt. In 1992, he made his debut at the Vienna Staatsoper as Italienischer Sänger in Rosenkavalier. The same year, he also arrived at La Scala, first in small parts, later as Rodolfo (1994) and Stiffelio (1995). Via Strasbourg, St. Gallen, Brescia and Como, he came to Rome (Francesco in Berlioz' Benvenuto Cellini, 1995) and Lisbon (Alfredo, 1997). He went on to sing in Karlsruhe (Foresto, 1999), at the Deutsche Oper Berlin (Ismaele, 1999), the Bregenz festival (Riccardo, 2000), the Monnaie in Brussels (Macduff, 2001), Copenhagen (José, 2000), Montpellier (Foresto, 2001), Parma (Macduff, 2001) and Covent Garden (Gabriele Adorno, 2002). From 2004 to 2016, he sang regularly at the Metropolitan Opera (Pinkerton, José, Radames, Manrico, Calaf and Canio). In 2002 and 2008–10, he was back at the Vienna Staatsoper for a handful of performances (as Pinkerton and Cavaradossi). In the 2010s, he added Munich, the Arena di Verona, Paris (both the Op&eacut;ra Bastille and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées), Chicago, San Francisco, Zürich and the Liceu in Barcelona to his curriculum vitae, and was also several times back at La Scala (Radames 2013, Canio 2015, Giannetto Malespini in La cena delle beffe, 2016), and at Covent Garden (Pinkerton, Manrico, José and Calaf). He continued his career into the 2020s.

He was considered one of the foremost singers of his generation, and the Corriere della Sera even called him one of the four best tenors in the world. Those judgements, and his excellent career, are a clear sign just how dead opera is; his voice is ill-placed, he often bleats like a goat, he wobbles, and a few years into his career, his top was a disaster. One of the four best tenors in the world? I beg for mercy!!

Reference 1 and picture source, reference 2: Kutsch & Riemens, reference 3