Record companies love anniversaries, so
 with Wagner, Verdi and Britten all reaching significant ones in 2013, we can expect a plethora of celebratory releases. Rolando Villazón actually has two Verdi tributes out: one a compilation from his former label, Virgin Classics, which predates the tenor’s well- publicised vocal crisis and subsequent 
surgery; and this new, meatier
 collection, recorded – with able
 support from the Orchestra del
 Teatro Regio di Torino and its
 principal conductor Gianandrea 
Noseda – as an early birthday
 present to Italy’s operatic master.

There’s no avoiding the difference
 in Villazón’s voice: his molten gold
 timbre has hardened and the sound as a
 whole (particularly up top) is narrower and tighter, no longer the effortless wonder it
 once was. What hasn’t changed is Villazón’s inimitable enthusiasm. He wears his heart quite audibly on his sleeve, and reinforces 
it with instinctive, pliable phrasing and a knack for five-minute vocal portraiture. His program here is substantial and varied, with plenty of lesser-known repertoire alongside several of the usual suspects, and even
 a few non-operatic selections, including 
three Romanze orchestrated by Berio. Villazón attacks each piece with gusto, and if the results aren’t always flawless, his commitment is undeniable. The Duke’s Questa o quella and La donna è mobile are sung with a hint of seductive glint – despite his reputation for a manic 
stage presence, Villazón resists hamming up these party pieces – and the bitter laments of Corrado (Il corsaro), Jacopo (I due Foscari) and Riccardo (Oberto) show his voice’s Mediterranean colours at their lachrymose best.

But in climactic passages, Villazón singing starts to sound pressurised and forced. The higher the music lies and the denser its orchestration, the more evident his newfound limitations. Don Carlo’s Fontainebleau! Foresta immense and the Ingemisco from the Requiem suffer particularly, and the contrast with Villazón’s earlier, healthier voice is particularly obvious when he comes to Alfredo’s Act II aria. Both are gutsily sung as ever, but vocally they’re a distant second to his famed Salzburg Festival performances – a sensation at the time and preserved for posterity (and odious comparison) on best-selling CD and DVD. Yet Villazón’s comeback is admirable. His voice might have lost some of its sheer splendour, but it’s otherwise in remarkably good shape, and for all his troubles, he’s 
still one of the most interesting singers of his type.