Francisco Casanova

Casanova got his first voice lessons already in his native Seibo. In 1978, he relocated to New York City, where he studied with Pier Miranda Ferraro. He must have done more than just that in New York, since he studied until 1991. He won a singing competition in Barcelona in 1990, but there is no information as to any kind of a career until 1996, when he jumped in for Luciano Pavarotti in a concert at the Avery Fisher Hall in New York. Only then, at age 39, he seems to have started singing in public: Avignon (Forza del destino), Parma (Ernani), Spoleto Festival (Verdi's Requiem), Bologna (Lombardi alla prima crociata), Dresden (Roberto Devereux, with Edita Gruberová). In 1999, he made his debut at Carnegie Hall as Arrigo (Vespri siciliani), in 2000 at the Vienna Staatsoper as Éléazar, next at the Paris Opéra Bastille as Italienischer Sänger, and then in January 2001 at the Met as Manrico. He also appeared at the Berlin Staatsoper, the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, and the Stadttheater in Klagenfurt.

He is said to have had a repertory of 56 main roles, although I wonder where and when he sang them since I find absolutely no evidence that goes beyond what I've already said above. I heard him only once, as Arrigo at the Vienna Staatsoper, and it was a much less fortunate evening than the Tosca documented above; that I left at the intermission was largely the fault of Casanova. It certainly didn't help that he was rather on the opposite side of slim, but then, the Vespri production at the Staatsoper was "owned" by Johan Botha, and in comparison with Botha, Casanova was indeed slim. No: it was rather his erratic stage behavior that made him look precisely like Puss in Boots. That, together with the snarling sound that he produced that night made his performance difficult to endure.

Reference 1: Kutsch & Riemens, reference 2, reference 3