The voice to watch

ROLANDO VILLAZON HAS THE OPERA WORLD ON A STRING. The young Mexican tenor just completed a fairy tale year, with acclaimed debuts at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden in London and the Staatsoper in Berlin. He released his first CD, a collection of Italian arias; several critics ranked it among the best classical recordings of 2004. And his face graced the covers of a number of opera periodicals.

“Success has come very fast,” the 32-year-old Mexico City native said during a recent three-day stopover here to visit his in-laws. He and his wife, Lucia, live with their two infant sons in Paris. “Sometimes I feel I am flying in space, up among the beautiful clouds. My wife says, ‘It’s OK, enjoy the flight. Imagine you are the kite and I have the cord. I’ll keep you close to Earth.’ ”

The strength of that tether is likely to be further tested over the next few weeks. Southland aficionados are already eagerly awaiting Saturday, when Villazon will sing the first of seven performances of Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet” for Los Angeles Opera. Opposite him in the new production, directed by Ian Judge, will be another rising star, Russian soprano Anna Netrebko.

What has put Villazon at or near the top among up-and-coming tenors, colleagues and critics agree, is a silky lyric voice, remarkably thoughtful portrayals and a magnetic stage presence. (He’s booked solid in the world’s top theaters through 2009.) Inevitably, some go so far as to call him the next Placido Domingo, and the L.A. Opera general director just happens to be his mentor and good friend. They share certain vocal qualities, a bent for risk-taking and an all-out approach to rehearsing and performing.

“Besides his vocal ability and all its qualities, he has a phenomenal way of giving himself to the public, and the public feels it,” Domingo said by telephone, adding that he regards Villazon as his artistic son. “Then there is his charisma, which is extra and a blessing. You can’t take your eyes off him.”

Daniel Barenboim, the artistic director of Berlin’s Staatsoper -- who conducted Villazon in “Carmen” in December -- said over the phone from Chicago that Villazon was “extraordinary” as Don Jose, partly because of his need to perform at “maximum intensity.”

“You have the impression that Rolando doesn’t live as someone in the world who occasionally sings,” Barenboim said. “Rather, one has the feeling that his real life is music and he just happens in addition to be a good husband, friend and very amusing fellow.”

Villazon follows Francisco Araiza and Ramon Vargas as Mexican singers who in recent years have made it to the top tiers of world opera. He is also among a handful of tenors striving to replace Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti as the next superstars. Among the others in that group are Marcelo Alvarez, Juan Diego Florez, Marcello Giordani, Salvatore Licitra and Joseph Calleja.

He comes from what Gerardo Kleinburg, the former artistic director at Mexico City’s Bellas Artes opera company, describes as a “great vintage” of half a dozen young Mexican singers now making their names. Others include baritone Jorge Lagunes, sopranos Olivia Gorra and Eugenia Garza, and tenor Alfredo Portilla.

“Rolando is not No. 1 today, but he is the one to keep track of,” said Kleinburg, who was among the first to recognize Villazon’s talent. “I have no doubts he is Domingo’s heir as a major operatic figure in the world. We’ll have to wait 10 or 15 years to see, but maybe you will remember my words.”

That kind of acclaim has raised expectations for L.A. Opera’s version of Gounod’s 1867 take on Shakespeare, especially considering Villazon’s athletic good looks and Netrebko’s fashion model beauty. Hopes are high that they’ll bring sex appeal to an opera that should be -- but rarely is -- bathed in it.

“It’s not so often you have a Juliet who looks like a Juliet and a Romeo who looks like Romeo,” Villazon said. “She is wonderful, and we both have the reputation of giving everything onstage, so I hope the combination will live up to expectations.”

The two have worked together just once before, in a single “La Traviata” in Munich, Germany, in 2003. But opera managers see a great artistic and commercial future for the pair. This year they are to sing a “Traviata” in Salzburg and Massenet’s “Manon” in Berlin.

Judging from Villazon’s televised 2001 performance in a New York City Opera “La Boheme” that helped launch his international career, dramaturge Roger Pines of Lyric Opera of Chicago foresees great things from this month’s Villazon-Netrebko matchup.

“Villazon showed that he was an unusually considerate, sensitive partner” opposite Maria Kanyova as Mimi, Pines said. “That bodes well for his Romeo. Don’t forget that Romeo and Juliet sing no fewer than four duets.”

Finding his voice

The son of a computer programmer, Villazon developed an early interest in singing and says he bought his first Domingo record -- the crossover album “Perhaps Love,” with John Denver -- when he was 12. But he didn’t decide to pursue a vocal career until the relatively late age of 20, when he entered Mexico City’s National Conservatory of Music. Until then, his goal was to become a priest.

A year later, he summoned his courage and went to audition for Kleinburg at the Bellas Artes company, the nation’s largest and its richest in tradition. Not overwhelmed by what he heard, Kleinburg nonetheless hired the tyro to sing small walk-on roles in several productions in the mid-1990s.

“He told me he saw a special energy and that he was going to bet on that,” Villazon said. Remembers Kleinburg: “It was his charisma, which is his main characteristic, besides having an easy voice with extraordinary high range and a passionate way of singing, as is common among Latin singers.”

Critics of Mexican President Vicente Fox’s cutbacks in art spending say the flowering of talent that produced Villazon could soon wilt. The number of operas scheduled this year by Bella Artes is far fewer than in recent years, and there is a stark absence of international stars. (Villazon is not scheduled to sing any operatic roles in the capital this year.) Fewer operas means fewer young singers get breaks like the one Villazon got.

“For me, it’s a sad story, because this has been an important city in operatic terms,” Kleinburg said. “Now, it’s like we’re getting the season you have at a conservatory.”

The Domingo influence

During the ‘90s, Villazon was accepted into a number of programs for young artists, including in San Francisco and Pittsburgh. But his career took off after he finished second at Domingo’s 1999 Operalia vocal competition in Puerto Rico. At the closing gala, he sang a duet from “La Boheme” with Domingo -- the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.

The younger man deflects suggestions that he is the “next Placido.”

“I am honored because he is my idol, and he is the best artist ever to set foot onstage. But no one will ever do what he has done,” Villazon said. “The voice. The musicianship. And from Mozart to Wagner, he’s done something like 127 roles and he just keeps going.”

Domingo’s versatility and longevity are the standards Villazon has set for himself, especially as he slowly makes the transition from light, lyric tenor roles to heavier fare, such as Don Jose and the supremely dramatic Verdi heroes. They require more force and volume than most lyric tenors possess and present risks of irreversible vocal damage if singers try to force their sound.

Barenboim believes Villazon can make the transition if he’s careful, just as Domingo did. In the 1960s, he recalls, “I was there in Tel Aviv when Placido sang his first Don Jose. And I would never have dreamt that he would go on to sing Parsifal, Tristan and Otello, because his voice was much lighter then, as is Rolando’s now.”

Lyric Opera’s Pines, a frequent judge at competitions involving young singers, agrees: “Villazon seems to be singing the right repertoire, and when he takes a risk, it’s the right risk. He scored a great success in Verdi’s ‘Don Carlo’ [in Amsterdam under the baton of Riccardo Chailly], but to his credit he didn’t immediately start singing it everywhere.”

Another vocal risk that paid off handsomely for Villazon was singing the title role in “Tales of Hoffman” for England’s Royal Opera last February, a performance that, according to the Sunday Times critic, was loaded with “star potential and striking individuality.”

“Some people were skeptical, but the heavier roles I did in 2004 -- Don Carlo, Hoffman, Don Jose -- were three of my best successes,” Villazon said, admitting it felt good to prove the skeptics wrong.

He said he and his wife chose to live in Paris mainly because it is closer to most of his singing engagements and he has to spend far less time traveling than if they lived in North America. But the couple have fallen in love with the city and its cultural offerings. Villazon is widely read. Recently, he has finished books by novelists Carlos Fuentes, Gunter Grass, J.M. Coetzee and Elfriede Jelinek, and he said he learns as much about operatic characterization from literature as from other singers’ CDs.

The vertiginous ride to the opera world’s top ranks has made Villazon somewhat dizzy, and he volunteers that he has sought help to cope. He talks to his Mexico City therapist by phone four times a week, he says. “Any kind of success brings the fear of others’ envy, the fear of being alone in these heights, the higher you fly. So I am confronting this other me, the one that is being born.”

He said that with the aid of the psychologist, whom he’s been seeing for nine years, he’s also had to work on overcoming a trait he believes is common among Mexicans who attain success -- the need to apologize for it, a complex that derives in large part from Mexico’s proximity to the United States.

“It’s the feeling many people have here that ‘there is always someone better than me, and I am not going to make it.’ ... We have been raised with this way of talking with our hats off in front of everyone, saying, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t be a menace to you.’ ”

“But when you see that a Francisco Araiza and a Ramon Vargas have shown that international success is possible, you don’t mind breaking tradition and the historical parameters. If you have the vocal material, the courage and the talent, you deserve to be wherever you are,” he said, as if still trying to convince himself. “It’s not a lottery.”

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‘Romeo and Juliet’

Where: Los Angeles Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Feb. 3, 9, 12 and 17; 2 p.m. Feb. 6 and 20

Price: $25 to $190

Contact: (213) 972-8001 or www.losangelesopera.com