Like the Callas
"Andrea Chénier" which I have just finished reviewing,
the set bears the warning "The technical imperfections of the original
recording mean that the sound quality of this live performance is not
of the overall standard normally to be expected". Frankly, I think
EMI are shooting themselves in the foot here, because anyone who has persevered
with the very poor sound of the "Chénier" and imagines
more of the same (for an opera that Callas recorded in the studio anyway)
is going to walk right away. Again, we are not told where the recording
came from, but this time it is perfectly in line with other live recordings
from the early 1950s in the Italian Radio archives and, if the source
was not Italian Radio itself then it must have been a re-broadcast well
into the FM era. The sound is limited, a little boxy, but real patches
of distortion are confined to the choral scenes and Callas’s top C at
the end of Act 2. Otherwise the voices are reasonably well caught and
even the orchestra can be appreciated. In short, while a Walter Legge-made
studio production from 1953 would have been better, not all studio recordings
from this time made by other companies necessarily were and I should have
thought that anyone prepared to countenance at all a live performance
from nearly fifty years ago will be pleasantly surprised at how trouble-free
it is.
"Medea" was an opera to which Callas attached
particular store and she notched up a total of 31 performances, quite
a lot for an opera which is not everyday fare (all this information,
and much else, is to be found in the booklet). Her first performance
had taken place earlier the same year, 1953, in Florence under Vittorio
Gui. The meeting with Bernstein was a chance one, for the original plan
was to present Alessandro Scarlatti’s "Mitridate Eupatore"
under Victor De Sabata. However, De Sabata fell ill and, in view of
the success of "Medea" in Florence, the decision was made
to present this instead. Gui was otherwise engaged and so Maria Callas
herself, who had been listening to a recent broadcast concert conducted
by Bernstein, suggested that the young American might be invited to
conduct.
It was a hunch that worked. Bernstein had done very
little in the opera house and had to learn "Medea" in five
days. That being so, I can only say that the results are a tribute to
his genius – there is no other word for it. I can conceive that a well-versed
musician might swat up this score in five days and, with the backup
of the orchestra’s and singers’ experience, carry off a decent "traditional"
performance. But Bernstein in those five days made the score his own,
conceiving and then triumphantly bringing off a dramatic vision which
must have come as quite a shock to Milanese ears in 1953. As for Callas,
she clearly feels free to throw herself into the plight and the complex
psychological state of Medea without let or hindrance. "Bel canto"
is put rudely on one side as she lets fly with guttural, savage vowels,
snarling chest tones and reckless top notes. She and Bernstein strike
sparks off one another from the word go, and this is a singing/acting
performance such as the theatre can rarely have experienced.
Furthermore, they inspire the rest of the cast. One’s
first reaction is that the other singers are not up to very much, and
in the case of the Glauce (who has little do after Medea has come on)
I’m afraid that remains so. But Gino Penno and Giuseppe Modesti get
caught up in the event and cope more than valiantly when Callas is around.
There were those who found Bernstein’s approach anachronistic
(but where were those critics when Furtwängler had conducted Gluck’s
"Orfeo ed Euridice" at La Scala two years before, a performance
still preserved in the archives?). I’m not so sure. Certainly, if a
present day authenticist such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt were to take on
this opera (and the sooner he does the better) then I might expect that,
unafraid of extremes as he is, something akin to Bernstein’s bristling
energy, his sharp characterisation of accompanying figuration and, at
the other extreme, his long drawing out of moments like Neris’s aria
with its haunting bassoon solo, would emerge. In one respect, though,
I venture to suggest that a Harnoncourt performance would be very different
for, while I have referred all along to "Medea" the truth
is that there "ain’t no such thing". Cherubini was working
in Paris, his opera was called "Medée" and it followed
French opéra-comique convention by carrying the drama forward
by means of spoken dialogue rather than recitative. This convention
was not, however, normally applied to tragic opera and the work met
with no very great success either in Paris in 1797 or (with some changes)
in Vienna in 1812. The "Medea" over which both Brahms and
Wagner enthused was a revision presented in 1855 by Franz Lachner, who
provided his own recitatives in the place of the original dialogue.
By a curious irony Lachner, a conservative to the point of self-effacement
in his own compositions (in so far as we know them) was inspired by
the subject to go in for some pretty modern harmonies which sit uneasily
alongside Cherubini’s essential classicism. Incredibly, given the celebrity
of the work and our present-day obsession with authenticity, no recording
of the opera as Cherubini wrote it seems to have been made (so how about
it, Harnoncourt or Gardiner?).
After the run of 5 performances with Bernstein, Callas
kept the opera firmly in her repertoire. Still in 1954 she was repeating
it with Gui, this time in Venice, and some 1955 performance in Rome
under Santini were notable for the presence in the cast of Boris Christoff.
Then in 1958 she appeared in a Dallas production under Nicola Rescigno;
the mouth-watering cast included Teresa Berganza, Jon Vickers and Nicola
Zaccaria. The same team (with Cossotto in the place of Berganza) came
to Covent Garden in 1959 while Callas finally brought the opera back
to La Scala in 1961 and 1962 under the baton of another American conductor
still warmly remembered in Italy, Thomas Schippers. Vickers was again
Giasone and the cast also included Simionato and Ghiaurov. Lastly, if
you fancy seeing her without hearing her, there is the 1969-70 film
directed by Pasolini. It is remarkable how much of all this has been
preserved; bootleg versions of a 1953 Gui, of 1958 and 1959 Rescignos
(Dallas and Covent Garden) and a 1961 Schippers have circulated. I state
this for information and am not able to report on their sound quality.
An actual EMI recording was never made but in 1957 a studio version
was made for Ricordi under Tullio Serafin with an unexceptional cast
and EMI have since adopted it into their Callas canon. All the same,
in view of the quite extraordinary artistic meeting it documents, I
should be inclined to go for this Bernstein as "the" Callas
version from now on.
"Medea" requires the qualities of a true
singing-actress. If Callas was reckless with her resources, the subsequent
studio history of this opera documents two equally reckless ladies who
singed their vocal wings even more badly: Gwyneth Jones (Decca) and
Sylvia Sass (Hungaroton). Lamberto Gardelli conducts in both cases.
Two other singing actresses, on the other hand, who had the staying-power
for a long career can be heard live; Magda Olivero on a bootleg issue
in Dallas in 1957 under Rescigno (the same production later joined by
Callas) and Leonie Rysanek on an official release from the Vienna State
Opera in 1972 under Horst Stein (RCA Red Seal 74321 79595 2). This latter
looks like the choice at the moment if you want a reasonably modern
stereo version. But I repeat, a properly authentic edition of what Cherubini
actually wrote is urgently needed.
Christopher Howell