Recordings Review: The Last Laugh

Dmitri Hvorostovsky takes his final curtain in Rigoletto.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Rigoletto, a role he sang at the Met and Covent Garden.
Photo by Johan Persson, © Royal Opera of Covent Garden

The death of baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky (from brain cancer, last week) sent an earthquake through the opera world. "Dima", as he was known was a beloved figure, for his velvety instrument and leonine stage appearance. Those qualities made him a star: an ideal leading man (in a few operas) or a bad guy you loved to root for in many others. His final recorded achievement, made earlier this year in Lithuania, is the title role in Verdi's Rigoletto

. He was well suited to play such a complex character, one who is both leading man and villain at once.