by John Y. Lawrence

The Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago's fifth annual Collaborative Works Festival began Wednesday night with a solo recital by Italian bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni, accompanied by pianist Craig Terry at Ganz Hall at Roosevelt University. Although the series as a whole is titled "American Spirit" and the remaining three concerts—running through Saturday—will focus on American repertoire, the emphasis of Pisaroni's concert was on Italian music.

Even the first half of the concert, which was entirely devoted to the music of Schubert, opened with a bit of Italian flavor with Schubert's Drei Gesänge fur Luigi Lablanche. In these three settings of Italian texts—two by the librettist Pietro Metastasio–Schubert pulls off an entirely convincing impression of early 19th-century Italian opera, almost to the point of effacing his own identity.

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Source: http://chicagoclassicalreview.com/