A leading contender among all Macbeths
Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 02/28/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Opera d'Oro has very few first-choice recordings in their extensive catalogue of priate tapes, but this 1970 Macbeth from the Vienna State Opera is one. It's in good FM stereo with close-up miking and good orchestral balances. There are stage noises, but for once they actually aid the performance, given the various antics of the witches--they're a scary bunch of cacklers.
The leads are impossible to fault. Sherrill Milnes sings without shouting, displaying the innate high quality of his voice, and his dramatic protrayal is quite convincing in its various moods. He's on a par with the legendary Leonard Warren. Christa Ludwig has all the notes for Lady Macbeth, a role that straddles the line between dramatic soprano and high (veyr high) mezzo. This performance dates from the brief eriod when Ludwig ventured into accessible soprano roles like the Marschallin and Lady Macbeth. She's quite thrilling, although it must be said that she can't sound evil in the slightest.
As you'd expect, Karl Bohm offers crisp, experienced discipline; he gives us as good orchestral work as we've ever heard in this opera, and the chorus keeps together very well for a staged performance. What sets this Macbeth apart, in fact, is the palpable feeling of live drama, a great help in a transitional work where Verdi has all the theatrical tricks up his sleeve but hasn't yet mastered melody and psychology.
Note: This is an expensive version with full libretto, of a recording that is still available at a much lower price with skimpy synopsis only. I don't know if remastering has also been added."
Live 1970 performance with great singing, but perhaps a litt
L. E. Cantrell | Vancouver, British Columbia Canada | 04/12/2009
(4 out of 5 stars)
"SOURCE:
This is a 1970 recording of a live performance, presumably at the Vienna State Opera.
SOUND:
I have had his recording for a couple of years, listening to it only through my admittedly far from state-of-the-art speakers. I had always taken it to be mono. However, prior to writing this review, I listened to it once again, this time with headphones. To my great surprise, there is either a fault in my phones or the recording actually does possess some very anemic stereo separation.
It should be noted that there is a certain amount of stage noise, perfectly acceptable to me but horribly intrusive to others--and inevitably, one delicate little cough from the audience at exactly, precisely the wrong moment. That audience, by the way, had to have been massively sedated. With one or two exceptions, their reactions range from bland to blander.
The overall sound quality is nothing remarkable--not bad, but no more. On the other hand, the sound quality on this recording is head and shoulders above--no, more than that, a whole order of magnitude better than that of the famous Callas recording from the 1950s.
CAST:
MACBETH (aka Macbetto) - new-made Thane of Cawdor and tyrant king that shall be - Sherrill Milnes (baritone)
LADY MACBETH (aka Lady), wife, co-conspirator and dedicated foe of d----d spots - Christa Ludwig (mezzo-soprano at her most soprano-like)
MACDUFF (pronounced "Macdoof" in these parts), a man with a SERIOUS grievance who was from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd - Carlo Cossutta (tenor)
BANQUO (aka Banco) - not a king himself, but ancestor to the Stuart kings - Karl Ridderbusch (bass)
MALCOLM, son of the murdered King Duncan, who will reign as Malcolm III Canmore (= "Big Chief") after Macbeth's death - Ewald Aichberger (tenor)
LADY-IN-WAITING to Lady Macbeth - Gilels Flossman (soprano)
DOCTOR - Ljubomir Pantscheff (bass)
SERVANT - Harold Proglhoff (bass)
HERALD - Ivo Vinco (bass)
ASSASSIN - Siegfried R. Frese (bass)
CONDUCTOR:
Karl Böhm. Opera d'Oro remains mute on further details but other sources identify the orchestra as the Vienna State Opera Orchestra--and with that, one must assume the chorus is the Vienna State Opera Chorus.
DOCUMENTATION:
This is Opera d'Oro's premium version of this opera. It comes with ans Italian-/english libretto. [Note: There is also a cheaper version in the standard Opera d'Oro barren format, without libretto. Od'O has also issued this performance as part of a 14-disk Bravissimo set of Shakespearean operas with even less documentation.]
TEXT:
This is a very peculiar performance of Verdi's "Macbeth." To start with, the dance music has been expunged, including even the Hecate scene. Then there are a few cuts within vocal numbers, removing some internal repetitions. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Verdi's revised fourth act finale has been given the heave-ho.
The dances are not necessarily a great loss. They are serviceable, not much more. They occupy about 22 pages in my 320-page piano-vocal score. The elimination of some internal repetitions are painful to completists and purists, of course, but hardly vital to the opera.
The finale, though, is a different matter. For the 1847 premiere, Verdi had set to music a dying speech from the mortally wounded Macbeth because that was exactly how the play was being performed on the London stage at the time. Only later did Verdi discover that the final speech is entirely spurious, no more than a sop to ham actors who wanted a strong send-off. Such was Verdi's veneration of Shakespeare that he cut the aria when he discovered the truth of the matter.
The current standard text, which dates from Verdi's massive 1867 revision, has Macbeth flee from the stage when he learns that Macduff was not of woman born. (Alas, "Lay on Macduff..." etc., did not get translated into the opera.) Macbeth is slain offstage. Macduff returns to crown Malcolm and the opera ends with a chorus of triumph over the fallen tyrant. Not to put too fine a point upon it, that final chorus stinks. How Verdi, the great master of the rousing chorus managed to boot this one in an otherwise fine opera is a total mystery to me--but boot it he did. This is particularly painful for me, because I have been cast to alternate in the roles of Macduff and Malcolm in a production this fall, and those two tenors really get to wail in this finale, but even so, it stinks. I am going to argue strongly that it be cut in our production. Frankly, I prefer the spurious aria and the truncated crowning of Malcolm that appears on this disk to Verdi's final thoughts on the matter.
COMMENTARY:
Verdi was a great admirer of the Bard of Avon. Among the few volumes found on a shelf near his bed after his death was a well-thumbed set of Shakespeare in Italian translation. The younger Verdi was particularly attracted to "Macbeth," "King Lear" and "The Tempest." Even the remote possibility that he might have set the latter two to music is enough to make a true Verdi fan throw up his (or her) hands to rail against fate and history.
"Macbeth" was probably Verdi's favorite amongst his earlier works. It premiered on March 14, 1847 at La Pergola in Florence, a year after "Attila" and six months before "I masnadieri." It's text is noticeably more faithful to Shakespeare's original than either "Otello" or "Falstaff," both written many years later.
Early favorite though it was, Verdi was clearly not satisfied with the opera. Almost two decades later, when he was well into his middle period and universally acclaimed as the great man of Italian opera, he returned to "Macbeth" revising, tightening up, casting some things out and adding others, in particular, the tremendous "La luce langue." To those who care desperately about such matters, there is a jangling mixture of styles in the revised version. As it so happens, I am one who couldn't care less.
Even though the mature Verdi had second thoughts, it is clear that the youthful Verdi had a lot on the ball. "Macbeth," for example, marks the emergence of that new species, the Verdi baritone. Macbeth, as the great baritone Tito Gobbi put it, has "dramatic declamation"and "tessitura of an almost giddy height''. Gobbi studied the part for years but quailed before the thought of attempting it on stage. The very first Macbeth was Felice Veresi, who would later also become the first Rigoletto and the first Giorgio Germont in "La Traviata."
Lady Macbeth, likewise, is far from the typical Italian song bird of the period. The first Lady Macbeth, Marianna Barbieri-Nini, wrote years later with perhaps a little exaggeration that Verdi rehearsed the big first act duet for Lady Macbeth and her husband more than "one hundred and fifty times so that it might be, as Verdi used to say, more spoken than sung." It ought to be noted that Verdi was just thirty-three years old at the time ... and that extensive or even dress rehearsals were virtually unknown at Italian opera houses of the day.
This recording features about as strong a cast of principal singers as could be assembled in 1970.
Sherrill Milnes was at the peak of his form, not yet suffering from the vocal problems that dogged his career in later years. In the minds of many, he was the best Verdi baritone singing in 1970. He sings very well here, no question about it. Purely as a matter of personal taste, though, I disagree with some of his dramatic interpretations, most particularly with his approach to the Italian equivalent of the "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"-scene. I would greatly have preferred a more restrained despair from him at that point.
This recording captures a part of that short period when the great mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig was burning through the stratosphere in the great dramatic soprano roles. Like Milnes, she sings very beautifully. As has been noted elsewhere, she does indeed avoid the high D-flat at the end of the sleepwalking scene--and my reaction to that is, so what?
Macduff is essentially a lengthy comprimario role to which Verdi has attached a single barn-burner of an aria , "O figli ... Ah, la paterna mano". Carlo Cossutta offers a version of the aria that I would be delighted to hear on any opera stage today.
Bass Karl Ridderbusch was a big-time performer of the Germanic character roles. He is a fine Banquo.
Karl Böhm was a great conductor of Richard Strauss and Mozart. I must say, however, that I'd never associate his name with Italian opera and especially not with the young red-of-tooth-and-claw Verdi. Others have praised his work here for its close control and accuracy. I agree with them. This is disciplined--even dignified Verdi. As far as I am concerned, it is also often dead-wrong Verdi. This is exquisite, Viennese Verdi. I prefer down-and-dirty Italian Verdi. Milnes, Ludwig and Cossutta, following Böhm all sing extremely well but they--consciously, I think--avoid the essential brawniness that an Italian-oriented conductor would have emphasized for a great performance of "Macbeth."
Fine singing and playing--if a bit too refined--in a heavily edited text. I think this set just manages to be worth four stars.
LEC/Am/4-09"
Track Listings (20) - Disc #1