Recording of the Month
Luisa Miller came
at the end of what Verdi referred to
as his anni de galera or ‘years
in the galleys’. It was a period when
he was always racing against time. Whilst
composing one opera, he was planning
the subjects of others and supervising,
often in minute detail, the writing
of the librettos of another one or two.
Added to those pressures were negotiations
with impresarios and publishers for
operas to follow. In PART
2 of my Verdi conspectus I deal
in detail with the background and various
recorded performances of the ten operas
that he composed in the hectic five
years between I due Foscari (1844)
and Luisa Miller (1849).
In 1847 Verdi had signed
a contract to compose an opera for Naples.
He then spent the next two years trying
on one pretext or another to withdraw
from it. He particularly resented the
restrictive nature of the Neapolitan
censors who tended to embargo the more
interesting subjects that appealed to
him. Verdi thought the political unrest
in Europe in 1848 gave him the perfect
excuse he wanted and wrote to the San
Carlo breaking off his contract. But
it was not to be got rid of that easily.
As the Austrians re-took control in
the north of Italy after the insurgency
in Rome and elsewhere, the political
status quo returned. The San Carlo blamed
Verdi’s attitude on Cammarano for failing
to provide a suitable libretto for the
composer and threatened to sue and imprison
him. With a wife and six children to
support, Cammarano wrote to Verdi begging
him to fulfil his Naples contract; for
his librettists sake the composer did
so.
For the new Naples
opera Verdi stipulated that the work
should be ‘a brief drama of interest,
action and above all feeling’. He
also wanted something spectacular to
suit the size of the San Carlo and proposed
an opera based on ‘The Siege of Florence’.
The Naples censor, as he might have
expected, would have nothing to do with
sieges and the like. Cammarano suggested
Schiller’s ‘Kabale und Liebe’ (Intrigue
and love), the last of his early prose
plays, noting that there was ‘no
rebellion, or the rhetoric of Die Rauber’,
in the Schiller source of I Masnadieri
the Verdi opera written for London.
Cammarano, expert in dealing with the
censors of his native city, took care
to eliminate the political and social
overtones of Schiller’s play with its
story of innocence destroyed by corruption
and the machinations of those in power.
In Cammarano’s hands, subtly manipulated
by the composer, Schiller’s play became
Luisa Miller, Verdi’s fifteenth
opera. It was premiered at the San Carlo
on 8 December 1849.
Whilst Verdi might
originally have wanted something spectacular
for the San Carlo, what he and Cammarano
actually hatched was an intense personal
drama. In parts of La battaglia di
Legnano, Verdi’s previous
opera, the composer had learnt how to
express intimate emotions. In Luisa
Miller he takes this skill a quantum
leap forward together and adds a new
concentration of lyrical elements, achieved
by the avoidance of excessive use of
brass and timpani. Instead, the plaintive
woodwind tones give character to the
more intimate pastoral nature of the
early scenes. The individual characters
are filled out musically and encompass
the varying emotions they have to convey
which differ significantly across the
three acts. It is in the music of the
last act where scholars and musicologists
suggest that Verdi breaks new ground
and shows himself compositionally ready
for the subjects of the great operas
that were shortly to flow from his pen.
Despite the maturity
of the composition - after all it preceded
Rigoletto, the first of
Verdi’s great middle period trilogy,
by a mere fifteen months - the work
is only rarely seen on the stage. Recordings
are even more sparse. New York’s Metropolitan
Opera has featured the work more than
most. Performances there provided the
stimulus for the first stereo recording
in 1964 featuring Bergonzi alongside
the ultra lyric Anna Moffo as Luisa
(RCA GD 86646), the 1979 DVD version
(Review)
as well as the basis of the 1991 CD
recording (Sony. NLA). Both the latter
feature Placido Domingo as Rodolfo and
James Levine and the Metropolitan orchestra
and chorus. Decca took their contracted
tenor, Luciano Pavarotti, into the studio
in 1975 surrounding him with an international
cast of Montserrat Caballé, who
had been Luisa at the Met in 1968, and
Sherrill Milnes as her father. Pavarotti’s
father features in the minor tenor role
of Un contadino (a peasant) all under
the baton of Peter Maag the conductor
of this live performance made in Turin
six months before that studio recording.
The accompanying booklet
suggests that being aware of Pavarotti’s
scheduled performances alongside Caballé
at La Scala, RAI cast the Mexican Gilda
Cruz Roma as Luisa. I heard her in the
theatre on a number of occasions and
was impressed, as I am in this performance,
by her warm tone and vocal agility as
well as her secure vocal production
and legato. She makes a thoroughly convincing
Luisa, light-toned and carefree in act
1 and dramatically expressive in Luisa’s
fraught duet with her father in act
3 (Trs. 10-11). As Miller, Luisa’s father,
Matteo Manuguerra sings strongly with
tightly focused tone and firm voice.
If he hasn’t quite the vocal suavity
and mellifluousness of Milnes on the
studio recording he is a considerable
Verdi baritone and conveys the many
aspects of Miller’s character and dilemmas
with no little distinction. With the
redoubtable Anna Di Stasio relegated
to the minor role of Laura, a village
girl, I was impressed by the rich tones
of Cristina Angelakova in the important,
but small, role of Frederica, Duchess
of Ostheim and Count Walter’s niece
whom he plans as Rodolfo’s bride. Count
Walter, the scheming aristo, is sung
by Raffaele Arié who appeared
as Raimondo in Callas’s first Lucia
(Review)
in the mid-1950s. He is still sonorous
and generally steady and, importantly,
distinct in timbre from his fellow bass
Ferruccio Mazzoli as his evil scheming
servant Wurm, who sows distrust and
terror with good characterisation.
The title of the opera
focuses attention on Luisa, but the
tenor role might be a truer focus for
the title. Pavarotti at the time of
this recording was at the peak of his
vocal powers before ego, big concerts
and too much pasta impinged on his art.
He sings ardently with glorious open-voiced
tone and a wide range of colour and
expression. His dramatic involvement
and characterisation cannot be faulted
as he moves easily and naturally into
the role’s big moment, Quando le
sere al placido (CD 2 tr.7). Doubtless
in the studio recording there was more
than one take. In this account, with
his voice fully warm and allied to his
dramatic involvement in a live performance,
the aria comes across with greater meaning
compared with his studio version flowing
naturally with and from the evolving
drama.
On the rostrum Peter
Maag shows a good appreciation of Verdian
line and phrase, just as he does on
the Decca recording, but the live occasion
draws from him a tighter and more dramatic
third act in particular. Minor cuts
lose about eight minutes from concerted
passages compared with the Decca studio
recording. The sound has the voices
a little more recessed than the forward
manner of the studio recording but is
otherwise clear and well-balanced. Audience
presence and applause is restricted
to the end of acts. The booklet has
an excellent introductory essay and
synopsis in English, German, French
and Italian. Regrettably, the track-listing
is not extended into the synopsis, and
more particularly, the complete libretto
in Italian.
Robert J Farr
for details
Chorus and Orchestra Sinfonica RAI di
Torino/Peter Maag 
