In the winter of 2004, tenor John Tiranno sang a scene from an opera that had effectively been dead since 1871. The work was Franco Faccio’s Amleto, a setting of Hamlet with a libretto by Arrigo Boito. A young Anthony Barrese had spent much of the preceding year deciphering a barely legible manuscript and preparing a score. At a Sarasota Opera apprentice-artist workshop, Tiranno sang Hamlet, Barrese played the piano, and a long-lost opera took a small but consequential step back into the world. Ten years later Opera Southwest gave Amleto its American premiere. The story has become part of the company’s identity, but Tiranno was there near the beginning.
He has since built a career particularly rich in symphonic and concert music, from Buffalo to Nashville and Omaha. His repertory includes Bach, Handel, Mahler, and Berlioz. Albuquerque audiences also know him from Opera Southwest’s Madama Butterfly, Frida, and Mosè in Egitto, and from his song performances with Chatter.
In L’Enfance du Christ, Tiranno sings the Narrator, the tenor who opens the work, guides us through the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt, and returns for its final meditation. Berlioz dispenses with an overture and gives the Narrator the first words.
Among the many attractive musical moments assigned to the narrator is Le Repos de la Sainte Famille. (The Holy Family at Rest – (Listen). I’ve started that excerpt 48:47 because the orchestral introduction is some of the prettiest music I’ve ever heard, but if you want to skip ahead, the Narrator begins at 51:47 to describe the exhausted travelers discovering a spring in the desert. Joseph rests, Mary settles beneath a palm tree, the donkey grazes, and the child sleeps. (Sound familiar? This is the scene depicted by Caravaggio.)
As the family drifts off to sleep, the unseen angels of the NM Symphonic Chorus sing Alleluia.
OSW presents the Symphonic Chorus in Berlioz’ L’Enfance du Christ November 15, 2026 at 2pm
