Search - Giuseppe Verdi :: Verdi: Great Operas from LA Scala/Various (Ltd)

The La Scala of two different eras

David D. Gable | 02/28/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Verdi: Great Operas from La Scala (DG)

RIGOLETTO

Scotto [Gilda], Bergonzi [Duke], Fischer-Dieskau [Rigoletto]

Kubelik/1964

TROVATORE

Stella [Leonora], Cossotto [Azucena], Bergonzi [Manrico], Bastianini [Count di Luna]

Serafin/1962

TRAVIATA

Scotto [Violetta], Gianni Raimondi [Alfredo], Bastianini [Germont]

Votto/1962

UN BALLO IN MASCHERA

Stella [Amelia], Poggi [Riccardo], Bastianini [Renato]

Gavazzeni/1960

DON CARLO (final five-act Italian version)

Stella [Elisabetta], Cossotto [Eboli], Labò [Carlo], Bastianini [Rodrigo/Posa], Christoff [Filippo]

Santini/1961

MACBETH

Verrett [Lady Macbeth], Domingo [Macduff], Cappuccilli [Macbeth], Ghiaurov [Banco]

Abbado/1976

SIMON BOCCANEGRA

Freni [Amelia], Carreras [Adorno], Cappuccilli [Boccanegra], Ghiaurov [Fiesco]

Abbado/1977

AIDA

Ricciarelli [Aida], Obraztsova [Amneris], Domingo [Radamès], Nucci [Amonasro]

Abbado/1981

MESSA DA REQUIEM

Ricciarelli, Verrett, Domingo, Ghiaurov

Abbado/1980



The entity of La Scala receives top billing in this compilation of Verdi opera recordings, but it documents the great Italian theatre at two very different points in its history, embodying two very different conceptions of the authenticity that the name "La Scala" presumably imparts to it. The first five recordings were all recorded in the early 1960's, the last four during Claudio Abbado's reign as Music Director. The first five are documents of a living performance tradition, an authentic record of the kinds of singing and conducting and orchestral playing you would have found in the leading Italian opera house during the period. The authenticity of the Abbado era was increasingly of the self-consciously moralizing and musicologically correct variety. Abbado was every bit as much a "reformer" who came along to whip the money lenders out of the temple as his successor, the more vocal Riccardo Muti, and Abbado raised professional standards at La Scala, whipping the orchestra into shape, making of it, as they say, a world class ensemble during the same period when James Levine was working similar miracles at the Met. In either case, the music director's attitude was the attitude of a new score-respecting and "tradition" mistrusting generation, and the improvements of both music directors were mixed blessings. At both La Scala and that great Italian opera house in New York City, the Met, much of the distinctive sort of phrasing and Italianità that had been second nature to the house orchestra vanished into the shade in the age of Levine and Abbado.



I. ABBADO



If you like the unprecedentedly virtuosic playing so characteristic of the virtuoso ensembles of today, and you don't mind or even prefer the comparatively faceless playing equally characteristic of our era, especially in studio recordings, then Mr. Bland, Claudio Abbado, is your guy. Abbado is often a much more interesting conductor live than in the studio, but -- even in the opera house and concert hall -- he has tended to regard self-effacement as a condition of fidelity to "the score," and, in his La Scala days, he was unlikely to produce the kinds of results, at once fiery and idiomatic, that a whole slew of Italian conductors at mid-century were capable of, including most famously Tullio Serafin. On the other hand, technical standards of performance went up during the Abbado era at La Scala and everywhere else, and the kinds of slovenliness that were tolerated at La Scala in the 1950's and 60's were no longer allowed, at least when Abbado was in the house.



The Macbeth is probably the best of the four Abbado performances in this compilation, and Abbado's contribution to it is nothing if not lively, but the crispness of his rhythms is more Stravinskyan than Italianate, and the bland smoothness of his phrasing in the slow lyrical movements is not recompensed by the scrupulousness of his musicianship in other regards. In the Aida and Boccanegra he is somewhat less satisfactory from my point of view, because, as it turns out, he just happens to bring somewhat less energy to the proceedings.



II. ABBADO'S SINGERS



The four Abbado recordings embody an approach to casting different from the early 60's recordings as well: under Abbado there was an attempt to assemble the best possible "international" casts both for revivals at La Scala and in Scala recordings for DG. It's not only Abbado's solid professionalism but the starry cast of the Simon Boccanegra recording that has made it a standard recommendation for so many people (of whom I am not one).



One problem of the Abbado era was a comparative dearth of interesting Verdi baritones. Piero Cappuccilli was the star Italian Verdi baritone of the Abbado era, and he is Abbado's Macbeth and Boccanegra, but only faute de mieux, as it seems to me. Vocally, Cappuccilli more or less had the goods, but I find him a solidly uninteresting and not overly musical singer. Verrett is a thrilling and gutsy Lady Macbeth, Freni a lovely Amelia Grimaldi, the young Carreras a fiery Gabriele Adorno. In terrific shape vocally, Domingo sings gorgeously as Radamès, but, at least in this studio recording, he doesn't generate all that much excitement. Ricciarelli is an intelligent singer, and she makes beautiful sounds as Aida, but none of the involvement and often harrowing expressivity so palpable in contemporaneous live performances with Ricciarelli is much in evidence in her rather subdued studio incarnation of Aida.



III. RIGOLETTO WITH FISCHER-DIESKAU & KUBELIK



With its German Rigoletto and Bohemian conductor, the Rigoletto with Fischer-Dieskau and Kubelik is anomalous for this compilation, and Fischer-Dieskau is a controversial Rigoletto. An A&R man at DG must have decided that the right way to build a Rigoletto recording around their great German baritone was to import him and a symphonic conductor from the DG stable into an Italian opera house. Highly acclaimed in some circles, a controversial recording was the result. Many fans of Italian opera, whether sophisticated or otherwise, have decried the casting of a singer who was never an authentic Verdi baritone -- that is, never endowed with a big fat rich sound, among other things -- in this crucial Verdi baritone role, and their complaints are far from unjustified. Parts of the role find Fischer-Dieskau at the very limit of his power: the role lies high for him, and he sometimes resorts to a kind of crooning in order to sing softly in a high register. The question is whether the sensitive and intelligent performance Fischer-Dieskau actually gives is enough to make up for his limitations. In my book, it is.



Sad to say, my main objection to this set is Kubelik's contribution. For all of Kubelik's scrupulous musicianship, his performance is more dutiful than exciting, and his elegantly reserved performance has never convinced me that he had a profound grasp of the still somewhat coarse Italian style still characteristic of the middle period Verdi.



IV. ITALIAN CONDUTORS



Precisely what is missing from Kubelik's performance is available with extra garlic in the other early 60's performances in this anthology. Not only were Tullio Serafin, Antonino Votto, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, and Gabriele Santini all veterans of countless performances of Italian opera in numerous Italian opera houses by the time they recorded the performances in this set, they grew up in the shadow of the opera house in a culture where Italian opera reigned supreme. Even in their worst performances -- and Santini's worst were pretty bad -- there was a bedrock of the Italian style they took for granted in their every interaction with the Italian orchestras they presided over. These conductors and the Italian orchestras they worked with took for granted -- and un-self-consciously resorted to -- manners of phrasing and articulation that have largely been wiped clean from the Abbado performances in this compilation.



Now for the bad news. While these manners are indeed preserved in the recordings in question, only one is really exemplary of something like the very best that this performing tradition had to offer. Serafin was as great a conductor of ottocento opera as the genre ever knew, but the Trovatore in this set captures him very late in his day, and the young firebrand on evidence both in the famous early recordings of Ballo and the Requiem with Gigli and Caniglia and in countless live recordings from the 50's only intermittently turns up here. The Trovatore performance is rather wonderfully shaped and never boring, but there are more incendiary performances out there.



Votto was a reliable and indeed very interesting and imaginative conductor of Italian opera, but the Traviata in this set never quite takes off. The right ingredients are all there, but it looks more convincing on paper than it turns out to be.



Impressed with Santini's contribution to the EMI Boccanegra with De los Angeles and Gobbi, I was always surprised when friends characterized the typical Santini performance as soporific: in fact he rarely turned in a studio performance as remarkable as that Boccanegra, and there is often something excessively wan and mannered about his articulation. Santini's contribution to the DG Don Carlo is hardly without interest precisely because of the varieties of articulation he draws from the orchestra, but there are more energetic performances of the opera out there.



Perhaps the best conducted of the early 60's performances in this set is the Ballo with Gavazzeni. Gavazzeni could be an erratic performer, and his performances are all over the map. Even in the DG Ballo, some of his tempi are a shade slower than the norm, but he shapes every phrase in the opera with great distinction. Thoroughly involved in the proceedings, he manages to galvanize the orchestra della Scala.



V. SINGERS IN THE EARLY 60's PERFORMANCES



Fischer-Dieskau aside, the singers in the five early 60's recordings in this set all shared the stage with one another in opera after opera, opera house after opera house. Unlike some of today's prim, detached, and skeptical opera singers -- singers who hold this repertory at arm's length -- they utterly and earnestly believe in what they're doing, and there is a give and take in their performances that could only result from growing up within a living breathing performance tradition.



RENATA SCOTTO (Gilda in Rigoletto; Violetta in Traviata) never had the most creamy or opulent voice, and listeners for whom la bella voce is everything should turn elsewhere: detractors have described her sound as wiry, a description that became increasingly apt the older she got. But these recordings capture Scotto in her prime, and she was a sensitive and supremely intelligent singing actress. Her Gilda in particular is a very remarkable achievement.



ANTONIETTA STELLA (Leonora in Trovatore; Amelia in Ballo; Elisabetta in Don Carlo) was a second tier singer who did yeoman service at La Scala. Although her voice was of more or less the right weight for these roles, it was more serviceable than gorgeous. In common with many another Leonora, she was not quite agile enough for a perfect projection of the more florid writing in Trovatore, but she is a reasonably interesting and thoroughly committed performer, completely involved in her performances.



FIORENZA COSSOTTO (Maddalena in Rigoletto; Azucena in Trovatore; Princess Eboli in Don Carlo) had a rich and gorgeous instrument and temperament to spare. If she was never quite as volcanic a presence in the big Verdi roles as her older contemporaries, Fedora Barbieri and Giulietta Simionato -- if she was rarely as distinctive a singing actress -- her anything but dull performances capture her voice in glorious youthful form.



CARLO BERGONZI (Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto; Manrico in Trovatore) was one of the most elegant, stylish, and musical singers of his generation, and he is an asset in both of these roles. More lyric than spinto, he was actually a couple of voice sizes too small for the more heroic moments in Trovatore, but he was a canny enough technician to negotiate his way through them creditably. (I can't resist adding that you find a far more unbridled Bergonzi in contemporaneous live performances.)



ETTORE BASTIANINI (Count di Luna in Trovatore; Germont in Ballo; Renato in Ballo; Rodrigo in Don Carlo) was one of the reigning Verdi baritones of his generation and for good reason. He had a rich fat sound and temperament to spare. Except on rare occasions, he was not the thinking man's Verdi baritone that Tito Gobbi was, but his instincts were good, and he was a thoroughly involved performer.



BORIS CHRISTOFF was a celebrated King Philip in Don Carlo, and I've come to have a grudging respect for his incarnations of the role. I've attacked him often enough for the barking and Sprechstimme characteristic of his anything but subtle Grand Guignol approach to Mussorgsky's Boris, his most famous role, but, for whatever reason, his musicianship was much more reliable in the Italian repertory, where he kept his baser instincts under better control. I don't see how anybody could fail to see that he cuts a rather imposing figure as Verdi's King.



FLAVIANO LABÒ is a decent enough Don Carlo with a not unattractive instrument and reasonable instincts, and his musicianship is reasonably conscientious.



GIANNI POGGI, Riccardo in Ballo, is by far the weakest link in this set's chain. Poggi was actually not an insensitive singer, and his phrasing was reasonably imaginative, but -- characterized by a hooting and bleating that have to be heard to be believed -- his vocal production was inconsistent from phrase to phrase and often a ghastly experience. To make matters worse, he enthusiastically embraced the worst expressive mannerisms of the so-called provincial Italian tenor, and he gulped and sobbed to lachrymose expressive effect. In some of the more delicate and light hearted writing in the first scene, Poggi actually manages to do some imaginative and surprisingly sensitive things, but there is more evidence of his overwhelming faults than of his fugitive virtues in his performance.







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Miriam Finchelescu | KOHAV YAIR, Israel | 02/14/2010

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