Search - Donizetti, Noni, Valletti :: Donizetti: Don Pasquale

Idiomatic and wittily Italian take on a comic gem

L. E. Cantrell | Vancouver, British Columbia Canada | 08/06/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Source: Cetra studio recording made on 27-30 September 1952.



Sound: Passable mono in nicely cleaned-up re-masterings. This set is an appreciable improvement over the original Cetra LPs. Voices, as usual for recordings of this vintage, are nicely caught, while the orchestra sounds somewhat compressed.



Documentation: Libretto in Italian. Short essay in both Italian and English on the opera and on the identity of its librettist. Photos of Bruscantini and Noni.



Text: This appears to be a practical performing version. The libretto identifies omitted passages. The main loss is in recitatives involving back-and-forth chitchat. However, Norina and Don Pasquale each have an aria from which a verse has been cut.



This is a fine, idiomatic and funny version of a comic masterpiece. In every way, this is a better performance than the 1970s version with Beverly Sills and Alfredo Krauss--most particularly in the conducting, in which Mario Rossi demonstrates the dramatic sensitivity and sense of humor that Sarah Caldwell so conspicuously lacked.



Each of the four principal singers is excellent. Bruscantini and Noni were born to play their respective roles.



I had the privilege of seeing Cesare Valetti do Count Almaviva a few years after this recording was made. Heaven knows, the man could hardly move, let alone act, and he had all the rich charisma of a tree stump, but he sang like an angel. One of his CDs refers to him as the last tenore di grazia. Perhaps he was not the last but he was unquestionably one of the greatest.



Were it not for the survival of the seventy year-old recording with Tito Schipa, I would call this the definitive Don Pasquale.



(Note that Preiser has also released a version of this performance.)"