De Biasio embodied this hotheaded character, torn between love for Elvira and determination to seek revenge against Don Carlo, whom Ernani blames for the death of his father. He sang Ernani with verve and ardor but also taste. His voice is warm and sizable, with a youthful bloom. His only previous Met performance came a year ago when, at 42, he substituted one night for Ramón Vargas as Gabriele Adorno in Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra.”

For years a professional flutist, he emerged as a tenor in his late 30s, making his opera debut in 2006. The Sicilian tenor Roberto De Biasio, who sang Ernani, has followed an unconventional career path. Meade’s Elvira showed what this uncommonly gifted rising artist is capable of. Last fall she sang three performances of the title role in Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena” in the Met production created for Anna Netrebko. Just days after the announcement that the American soprano Angela Meade, 34, had won this year’s Beverly Sills Artist Award, a $50,000 prize, she earned a big, deserved ovation for her Elvira. Marco Armiliato conducted a capable though occasionally untidy performance.

And the Metropolitan Opera had four excellent lead singers on Thursday night, when “Ernani” returned to the repertory in Pier Luigi Samaritani’s gargantuan-looking traditional 1983 production, last seen during the 2007-8 season. All this comes through with the right cast in place. Not two but three entitled men try to claim the beautiful young Elvira: her uncle and guardian, Don Ruy Gómez de Silva, an old Spanish grandee Don Carlo, the imperious King of Spain, who you might think would have the upper hand and Ernani, who has lost his title and wealth during a civil war and become a very dashing bandit.īut in this early work, first performed in 1844, Verdi seized on the story as a vehicle for sweeping Romantic drama, complete with rousing choral scenes, and for broad explorations of human dilemmas. Based on a play by Victor Hugo, it is a melodramatic tale of a love quadrangle set in tumultuous 16th-century Spain. Even with several strong contenders for the title, “Ernani” may have the most implausible plot of any Verdi opera.

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