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What is one to make
of the Barcelona Spitfire Mercedes Capsir?
A coloratura soprano capable of vertiginous
heights she was discovered early, and
soon travelled to Madrid, Lisbon, Buenos
Aires and Paris. Though she couldn’t
displace Toti Dal Monte and Gilda Dalla
Rizza in Milan she did sing widely and
successfully in Italy (Bologna, Venice,
Rome and a few La Scala performances)
and did give a Rigoletto with Toscanini.
She was successful at Covent Garden
and also sang at the now unfairly forgotten
Italian opera company in the Netherlands
in the early 1920s – which employed
strong casts. One of her major successes
is happily documented on disc, and is
here in this Preiser recital; she gave
the premiere of Giordano’s one act Il
re in 1929. She seems to have been
pretty much at her peak around the late
twenties and early thirties and discographically,
at least, 1928-29 were notable for a
complete La Traviata and Barber of Seville.
She never sang in North America and
though she continued to sing intermittently
in Italy – her last La Scala performance
was in 1934 – her career appears to
have inexorably wound down. Her last
appearance was in Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio
segreto back in the city of her birth
at the Teatro Liceo in 1949. She died
in 1969.
And so what to make
of her? Sometimes her powers of coloratura
flexibility are astounding. Listening
to her I Puritani is a sobering experience
with its roulades of technique and her
command. Yet the Lucia extract, though
sung with technique to spare, sounds
… well, just tossed off. And whilst
her intonation survives the scrutiny
of Delibes and her technique is entirely
untroubled by the Benedict soufflé
one does begin to be troubled by an
ease of vocal production that doesn’t
seem, prima facie, to be matched
by commensurate depth of imagination.
Partly of course this is repertoire.
No one can sing the Benedict and expect
to be judged a Lotte Lehmann. But whilst
the Lucia is full of evenness of production
and superb ornamentation there is a
distinctly mechanical feel to it. Her
Traviata is good though it doesn’t sound
really quite stylish enough – it’s extracted
from the complete 1928 recording by
the way – but she can show acumen in
the lighter Marina, a Regal disc from
1929.
Perhaps a better case
for the consistency and greater depth
of her musicianship can be derived from
her complete recordings – I would suggest
La Traviata to start with where she
makes a good pairing with such as Carlo
Galeffi and Lionello Cecil. This Preiser
however is a well engineered and a generous
survey of her incendiary technical flourishes
and an apt introduction to a singer
I can never quite work out if I like
or not.
Jonathan Woolf