EGN NEWS DESK
Many bins of pizza had been delivered to the Metropolitan Opera on Sunday afternoon, and had been stacked on a desk within the hallway between some dressing rooms and the stage.
They had been a present from one of many singers showing within the matinee efficiency that day: the bass-baritone Patrick Carfizzi, who’s having attention-grabbing success within the modest however meaty position of Fra Melitone in a brand new manufacturing of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino,” which concludes its run on Friday.
That efficiency, remarkably, shall be Carfizzi’s 459th with the Met. “It’s an enormous present to be right here as typically as I’ve been right here,” he stated on Sunday as he placed on his make-up and costume, and warmed up. “You simply hold working. It’s step-by-step by step.”
Melitone doesn’t seem till the second act. So, because the opera started, Carfizzi was preparing in a dressing room subsequent to the one he lovingly calls the Charlie Anthony Suite, after its longtime inhabitant, the tenor Charles Anthony, a Met lifer who sang largely supporting roles in 2,928 performances from 1954 to 2010.
Carfizzi, who turns 50 subsequent month and is celebrating his twenty fifth anniversary with the corporate later this 12 months, has, within the talent and relish he brings to smaller elements, turn into one thing of a latter-day Anthony — or Paul Plishka, Bernard Fitch, James Courtney or John Del Carlo. (It was from this group that Carfizzi inherited the morale-building custom of ordering pizza for the forged and crew.)
He is a consummate comprimario, to make use of the standard Italian time period: a deeply skilled supporting participant, the opera equal of a personality actor. Audiences might cheer the visiting stars, however it’s singers like Carfizzi who permit the Met to perform at such a excessive degree, night time after night time.
“He actually represents the guts and soul of the corporate,” stated Peter Gelb, the Met’s basic manager. “He’s certainly one of a handful of singers we depend upon as a result of he’s a first-rate artist and has a stupendous voice. He’s the posh casting that the Met is able to.”
Even common operagoers might not instantly acknowledge Carfizzi’s identify. But they’ve virtually definitely seen him, time and again, typically because the form of anonymous character who gives exposition or piquantly strikes scenes ahead, just like the Speaker in “The Magic Flute,” the Mandarin in “Turandot” and the Doctor in “Pelléas et Mélisande.”
Lately, Carfizzi has been the Met’s favored Sacristan in “Tosca,” singing it over 50 instances prior to now six years. He has appeared regularly because the comically bumbling gardener Antonio in “Le Nozze di Figaro,” and within the reasonably bigger a part of Schaunard in “La Bohème.” Outside the Met, he has sung even larger roles, like Leporello in “Don Giovanni,” which he performs subsequent month with Boston Baroque.
“You see Patrick doing a wide range of sizes of roles at totally different theaters,” stated Michael Heaston, the Met’s assistant basic manager for inventive affairs. “He embraces each alternative, whatever the variety of measures of music.”
His elements, even when transient, have a tendency to supply ample materials for him to dive into. But the grumbling, earthy cleric Melitone in “Forza” is juicier than most, significantly in Mariusz Trelinski’s grim new staging for the Met, which takes a personality often performed for comedian aid and renders him chilly and merciless.
“In the rehearsal room,” Carfizzi stated, “the instruction was ‘strip out the buffo,’ which was nice.”
Instead of the usual amusing kvetchiness when he welcomes the beleaguered Leonora to the monastery the place she seeks refuge, Carfizzi’s Melitone sneers as he tosses her a skinny blanket. A scene through which he distributes meals to the poor has been stripped of jolliness, as he barks orders with ominous brutality.
“Melitone, for me, symbolizes the darkest a part of the Catholic Church,” Trelinski stated in an interview. “Not everybody within the church is like that, after all, however he’s that xenophobic, racist, divisive facet. And for Patrick, who has many instances performed comedian characters, I believe this was a metamorphosis for him. He rejected the merely enjoyable and audience-pleasing facet to the touch one thing darker.”
Carfizzi grew up in Newburgh, N.Y., about 60 miles north of New York City. As a boy, he was torn between pursuing pediatrics and jazz. (He dabbled within the euphonium, trombone and tuba.) Then he stuffed in for a fellow scholar who bought sick earlier than the center faculty play, and later replied to a newspaper advert in search of performers for a manufacturing of “Man of La Mancha.” That settled it: He started to take singing extra critically.
At 16, he visited the Met for a tour. On the stage, his father advised him to sing, and he powered out a couple of notes. “I assumed, ‘I actually love this,’” he recalled. “‘If they’ll have me, I’d like to attempt to do that.’”
During faculty, Carfizzi overcame a extreme case of Lyme illness, and was hit by a drunken driver in an accident that left him critically injured. “What saved me sane and saved me going was singing,” he stated. He auditioned for the Met’s younger artist program and was rejected, however a couple of weeks later, the corporate’s administration known as and supplied him his debut, as Count Ceprano in “Rigoletto” on Christmas Eve in 1999.
With a voice that’s wealthy but centered, and appearing that’s intelligible and fascinating, he made an impression even when his time onstage was restricted. “Efficiency turns into much more necessary,” Carfizzi stated of comprimario work. “Clarity is all the time necessary in opera, however it’s significantly key when you’ve 10 or quarter-hour max, simply by way of the story line. But it doesn’t matter if the position is three traces or three hours; all of it requires the identical self-discipline.”
When you’ve spent a very long time as a personality actor, it may be troublesome to make the trade view you as extra of a number one man; it’s a gradual course of. Next season on the Met, Carfizzi will as soon as extra sing a run because the Sacristan in “Tosca,” however can even give a single efficiency of one thing substantial, and new for him with the corporate: Dr. Bartolo in “The Barber of Seville.”
“If you have a look at Patrick’s trajectory over time, his voice has gotten larger,” Heaston stated. “And when somebody’s voice grows, you begin to open up totally different repertory for him.”
Could Wagner’s Alberich, as soon as the topic of a genial debate between Carfizzi and his manager, come sooner or later? Scarpia in “Tosca”? Contemporary operas — significantly, he hopes, the uncommon ones with a comic book bent? Paul Plishka spent a quarter-century on the Met doing smaller elements earlier than the home forged him as Verdi’s Falstaff — a dream position for Carfizzi, too.
“I’ve gotten extra affected person with time,” he stated. “If individuals see me that approach, nice. And in the event that they don’t, we hold attempting. Good well being keen, I’m not going anyplace.”
