Washington Concert Opera
Photo by Don Lassell for Washington Concert Opera
"Interpreting the part of Don Gaspar, an officer in service to Alphonse, tenor Rolando Sanz acquitted himself expertly, his intuitive mastery of Donizetti’s style evident even in his character’s declamatory lines. Considering the quality of Sanz’s instrument, it was atypically regrettable that Donizetti and his librettists did not give Don Gaspar an aria. This talented tenor made the most of all that his character had to do, however, his voice ringing heroically—no whimpering character tenor, he!—in the scene with Alphonse at the start of Act Two. Sanz proclaimed Don Gaspar’s dramatically portentous lines in the Act Two finale with the machismo of a world-class Pollione. Even in the concert setting he was the smug, insinuating courtier to the life, [though] few operatic courtiers match their machinations with such firm, focused singing."
Joseph Newsome, Voix des Arts