Ignacio Encinas

Ignacio Encinas was born in Barcelona, and managed to keep his date of birth secret for decades. However, in 2019, he participated with much success, on the Spanish TV channel "Antena 3", in a talent show for over-60s only, and presented himself as 70 years old; I wouldn't be surprised if he had actually been a bit older, but anyway, he must have been born no later than in 1949. Which means that he got a really late start as a singer, and must have done something else for a considerable part of his life... just what, is nowhere to be found. On that TV show, he also said that he had sung all over the world, without obtaining any decisive breakthrough, and that he had been "a good B tenor". Which is spot on, and reveals a healthy self-assessment that was certainly beyond what I'd have expected from Encinas (in person, he didn't seem completely devoid of vanity).

After studies in Madrid, Encinas received further vocal training from Gianni Poggi and Gino Bechi. His debut took place before his studies were finished, stepping in for a colleague in Lisbon (as Turiddu or as Alfredo, according to different sources), and shortly afterwards, he stepped in once again, in Trovatore in Oviedo for Pedro Lavirgen.

His "true" debut, though, took place in 1988 in Rigoletto at the Teatro Zarzuela in Madrid (so at roughly 40 years old). Appearances in Malaga, Las Palmas and Santander followed, then in Dijon, Liège (1990) and Marseille (1992). The operas he sang in those early years were Favorite, Pirata, Puritani or Adriana Lecouvreur. Now he got contracts with large theatres: In 1996, he made his debut at La Scala in Gioconda, in 2000 at the Colón in Buenos Aires as Turiddu, in 2002 in Barcelona as Pollione. He sang Manrico at the Vienna Staatsoper, Rodolfo (in Luisa Miller) at Covent Garden, and Riccardo at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Further places where he appeared include Hamburg, Paris (open air Aida at the Stade de France), Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Osaka, Athens, Rome, Naples, Palermo, Venice, Catania, Genova, Torre del Lago, Toulouse, Warsaw, Malta, and a dozen of smaller theatres in Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and so on. Operas in his repertory were Macbeth, Lucia di Lammermoor, Andrea Chénier, Pagliacci, Ernani, Turandot or Tosca.

There are many valid objections against Encinas: he was not very musical, getting into remarkable problems whenever he was singing anything he hadn't already sung a hundred times, rendering him very insecure in such cases, as far as both score and text; early on, his voice seemed aged, a bit wobbly, he was producing a stiff white sound, voice modulation zero, and the voice was regularly cracking when he attempted a piano... and yet, his acuti were trumpet-like, secure, brilliant, and if and when he knew a piece well enough to really interpret it, he was a quite exciting interpreter; one of those (rare) singers who can really heat up an audience. I heard him quite often in his later years, at the concert performances of rare Italian operas in Ternitz (organized by the fantastic private association "Amici del belcanto") as well as at the Zvolen Festival, and though much of his singing was anything but beautiful, I most always enjoyed it for its sheer passion.

Reference 1: "Amici del belcanto" program booklets; reference 2

The recordings from that concert are treacherous somehow... the "Nessun dorma" sounds much better on the recording than it did live at the concert. The "Di quella pira", on the other hand, made an excellent impression in the concert hall, not so on the recording. Alexander Plechinger is singing both Ruiz and the chorus section here. Wonderfully crazy! Plechinger is a quite successful composer of classical music, and a conductor; comprimario tenor is his third job.