I’d read about such
things, but not heard them. This issue
gives us a peep into a lost world of
opera production.
Let me explain. Nowadays,
when you put on the "Barbiere" and it’s
like you get out your most recent Ricordi
edition, carefully revised by Alberto
Zedda and, taking your cue from Claudio
Abbado’s classic DG recording, you pay
scrupulous attention to every detail
of the text, performing the music with
elegance, refinement, vitality and a
certain basic seriousness. Just as if
it was by Mozart, in short.
Sixty years ago the
score (unrevised) was a peg for a theatrical
show. It’s not just a question of cuts,
though these become increasingly ferocious
as the opera goes on, so that in the
latter half of Act 2 we get not so much
a performance as a whistle-stop tour.
Against these are to be weighed frequent
added lines, particularly by Baccaloni
as Bartolo who ends most of his lines
with a leering "eeeeh!", mimics Rosina’s
lines before actually replying to them
and generally keeps up a sort of muttered
commentary while others are singing
their parts. But if Baccaloni is an
extreme example, the others are not
far behind. Whether these are personal
gags on the part of the individual singers,
or traditional accretions, I don’t know,
but I am sure the basic practice was
normal at the time.
And then the notes
themselves of the recitatives are scarcely
respected. Entire sections are actually
done as dialog, and in others the singing
is a kind of Sprechstimme reminding
us of Noel Coward or even of Rex Harrison’s
performance in "My Fair Lady" which
succeeded in raising "non-singing" almost
to a noble art. But "My Fair Lady" wasn’t
an opera. Furthermore, this style of
comic non-singing even continues in
the ensembles, much of the finale of
Act One being resolved as semi-pitched
"parlando".
One other "liberty"
was traditional at the time; when Rosina
has her singing lesson the music she
takes out of her portfolio is not the
aria Rossini wrote for inclusion at
this point but Proch’s "Deh torna mio
bene". This lends unusual point to Bartolo’s
comment that "the aria, all things considered,
was pretty boring; music was something
else in my days".
So where does this
leave us?
The set is claimed
as valuable above all for Baccaloni
and Pinza. As a theatrical performance
Baccaloni must have been terrific –
the public rock with laughter whenever
he’s on stage. The voice is a firm and
authoritative one though the singing
as such – not that there is much – does
not seem particularly remarkable. Pinza
certainly was a great singer with a
great voice and his account of "La Calunnia"
is both histrionic and musical.
It is perhaps the finest I have heard
and rightly brings the house down. But,
apart from this, Basilio does not have
all that much to do in this opera.
John Charles Thomas
(1891-1960) was a Met stalwart, much
appreciated as Germont and Amonasro.
He is thoroughly at home in Italian
and gives a comic pantomime performance
along similar lines to Baccaloni’s.
The voice itself seems a bit rough and
cavernous.
Bruno Landi (?1905-1968)
was a genuine "tenore di grazia" with
a sweet, honeyed line in lyrical passages
and untroubled high notes (as we also
hear in the Flotow extracts). Had he
been born a generation or so later when
the Rossini-Donizetti revival was in
full swing his early training would
have included agility too; as it is
he pecks around the edges of many passages
where modern ears demand accuracy.
Today’s taste prefers
a mezzo Rosina, though since Rossini
provided variants and transpositions
for a soprano Rosina we cannot actually
say the latter is inauthentic. A soprano
Rosina is better suited to the essentially
frivolous conception of the opera current
at the time and the Italo-American Josephine
Tuminia has a bright and shallow soubrettish
voice with easy coloratura and an ability
to hold top Cs and Ds almost indefinitely.
In its way it’s an attractive assumption
of the role but others have given so
much more and Tuminia, having sung Gilda
and Rosina over two seasons, was not
called back to the Met. Irra Petina
is a caricatural Berta.
The conductor Gennaro
Papi was an old hand at the Met and
his rough and tumble approach suits
the pantomime conception well enough.
Besides, it would have taken a Toscanini
to impose order on his principals and
insist on observance of the score, though
the Leinsdorf recording of a decade
or so later shows that the Met Barber
Show, if still not quite embracing authenticity,
was to get a beneficial spring-cleaning.
Two things have to
be said, though. The first is that this
performance does enshrine an approach
to the business of performing a comic
opera the roots of which, if not the
substance, go back to Rossini’s own
days. In other words, he might have
been sarcastic about some of the ways
in which his notes were being treated
but he might not have disowned the general
style. The other is that people maybe
enjoyed their evening at the opera much
more than we do today. The Met public
plainly never have a dull moment. This
is a point to be weighed against the
serious refinement of an Abbado. All
the same, it belongs to an epoch when
Rossini was patronised as the composer
of a few good tunes rather than a musical
dramatist not so far behind Mozart and
deserving of the same respect. Still,
the very fact that you are unlikely
to hear a performance anything like
this today is justification for hearing
this one. The recording catches the
voices reasonably well and is really
remarkably good for what it is. The
less said about the soprano in the Flotow
duet the better and in Guild’s place
I’d have issued only the aria.
The booklet, like others
in this series, has a detailed essay
and mini-biographies of the singers
and conductor. It’s a pity they manage
to spell Rossini’s name wrongly ("Giaocchini"!)
twice over, on the back cover and under
his portrait, but there is a
mystery to clear up since both the Concise
Grove and the Italian Garzanti encyclopedia
spell it "Gioachino" while the Ricordi
score prefers "Gioacchino". The double
C is normal in modern Italian (the name
is equivalent to the German "Joachim")
but was not so in Rossini’s own days.
Christopher Howell
Bruno Landi (tenor), Vivian Della Chiesa (soprano)*,
San Francisco Opera Orchestra/Gaetano Merola
