Not so very long ago I reviewed a selection of
19 songs by Leoncavallo, sung by the Swiss tenor Fausto Tenzi.
That recording was made in Lugano in 1993. The same producer,
Danilo Prefumo, is now the artistic supervisor and booklet-note
writer of this set of Leoncavallo's "Complete Chamber Songs".
"Complete", that is to say, apart from the ones that are left
out. The Tenzi disc had two - "Hymne ŕ la Lyre" and "Ne m'oubliez
pas" - that do not appear here.
Things get off to a messy start. The booklet prints the French
text of "
La chanson de Don Juan" but Ledesma sings in Italian.
It introduces us to a full, resonant voice and all goes well until
he lets loose a bullish top note at the end. Why must so many
singers insist on reaching for a note that is one higher than
they've really got?
It's a pity this was the first impression. By and large Ledesma
is the most satisfying singer here. Many of his songs do not call
for high notes, and in those that do he manages them rather better.
In "
Suzon" we hear that he can sing French. The vowels
are a little approximate and the style itself remains thoroughly
Italian. Fausto Tenzi has better French - I see I criticised him
in my review but that was before hearing this CD. In the songs
that Ledesma sings that are also on the Tenzi disc I still prefer
Tenzi in those in French but find them pretty well equal in those
in Italian. A special case is "
Qu'ŕ jamais le soleil se voile"
which has greater impetus in the new version. This is because
Roberto Negri, who is a sensitive and often imaginative accompanist
- as is Finazzi here - has to yield to Finazzi in the very few
cases where sure-fire technique is required. In "
Ruit hora"
somebody might have explained to Ledesma that "quai" is not a
misprint for "quei" but a rather rare, poetic abbreviation of
"quali".
Sandoval's first song is in French. He occasionally remembers
the correct pronunciation of a word like "sombre" but before that
we've heard "ombray" and that's his norm. I won't go into detail
over Sandoval's French - it would be like listing every off-the-note
intonation in a Florence Foster Jenkins performance. Fortunately
his Italian is much better. However, it is an uncontrolled voice
with painful top notes. In every song of his that is also on the
Tenzi disc, the earlier version is an example of controlled phrasing
and properly shaded dynamics. Tenzi hasn't the personality of
a great tenor, but he knows his job. In "
Lasciati amar"
Sandoval changes some words and sings a top note that is not included
by Tenzi. Without a score I cannot say whether this is an alternative
sanctioned by Leoncavallo. I just wish he hadn't done it. Surprisingly,
Sandoval is successful and enjoyable in the famous "
Mattinata".
I can only surmise that, since this was presumably a song he already
had in his repertoire, he has had the time to master it fully.
It is also the one song here where a number of distinguished recorded
models exist that could be profitably studied. Towards the end
Sandoval sings a couple of lines where Tenzi is silent, leaving
the melody to the piano. Caruso did this, too, in the famous recording
with Leoncavallo at the piano, so there is authority for it, whatever
the score may say. I confessed I hadn't noted before that Tenzi
comes a cropper at the end of an otherwise excellent disc. The
penultimate line - "Ove non sei, la luce manca (where you are
not, all is darkness)" - gets mangled as "Ove tu sei, la luce
manca (wherever you are, all is darkness)". Not a very nice thing
to say to the woman you love. In a concert these things can happen.
In a studio there are things called retakes. So perhaps we can
prefer Sandoval for once.
Meszáros's first song is in German. A slightly guttural lower
register and free-flowing vibrato on the upper notes induces a
certain fascination - almost a cabaret style - that is not maintained
when she sings French. Her handling of the language is certainly
better than the tenor's but we don't get the real "u". "Fuit"
and "bruit" emerge as "fwee" and "bwee". Such attempt at French
vowels as she makes, however, is enough to add a vinegarish tinge
to her tone which fortunately disappears when she sings Italian.
Her first Italian song, "
Ninna-nanna", makes a reasonable
impression, but she does not spin a real pianissimo line and the
vibrato is loose in fortes.
Meszáros also sings the one English song, with words by the ubiquitous
F.E. Weatherly - he of "Danny Boy", "The Holy City" and much else.
Her English is fair, but someone could have explained to her that
we don't sing the "r" in words like "forget" and "heart", that
the "i" in "wither" is as in "mill" not as in "mile" and that
the English "t" is hard. "My heart is beating" emerges as "my
hard is beading". More seriously, the arching phrases of this
attractive song get a rather bumpy ride.
For whatever reason, Meszáros makes a better impression on CD
2. Her other German song confirms that she can colour and inflect
this language much better than the others she sings. It was only
at this point that I read her CV in the booklet and was not surprised
to see that all her singing studies were made in Germany. Her
French continues to add vinegar to her tone, though she does well
by the light charmer "
Jeunesse et printemps". And some
of her Italian songs are very good indeed. I noted that in "
C'č
nel tuo sguardo" and "
Vieni, amor mio", both fine songs,
I found her equal to the Tenzi version. This is even more surprisingly
so in "
Aprile" which opens Tenzi's disc and sounds there
like the archetypal "tenor song". So, in spite of my initial not
very positive impression, Meszáros, though uneven in her achievement,
does emerge as a singer with some potential, maybe more "interesting"
than the better schooled Ledesma.
Incidentally, a number of Meszáros's songs have texts that are
clearly for a man to sing. I am not particularly dogmatic about
this. As far as I am concerned a woman can sing even "Die Winterreise"
if she has something to bring to it. In a disc of rare songs by
one singer it is more than reasonable to include the composer's
best whatever "gender" is implied by the words. Tenzi sang at
least one "woman's song", but he altered the pronouns and adjectival
endings to make it a "man's song", something Meszáros doesn't
do. I should have thought that the object of assembling three
singers would have been to farm the songs out to singers of the
right sex. On the other hand, this would have meant more contributions
from Sandoval and I'm glad we were spared that.
But what of the music? The songs are unfailingly melodious. They
don't stick in the mind but they always fall gratefully on the
ear. The piano accompaniments are more inventive and fully worked
than might have been expected. Only very rarely do they fall back
on non-pianistic, orchestral devices like tremolandos. Leoncavallo
would seem as deserving of a place in the recital room as he is
in the opera house. 15 of the texts are by Leoncavallo himself,
including the well-known "
Mattinata". No great poet - a
sort of Italian F.E. Weatherly - but adept at giving himself what
he needed. Incidentally, the "other" "
Mattinata", sung
immediately before the famous one, has a text by the major Italian
poet Giosuč Carducci. A number of distinguished poets crop up
in the French texts.
There are really two ways of presenting these "romanze". Readers
will know that singers like Gigli recorded a wide range of lightish
songs by Tosti, Denza and other names that we hardly remember
even if we like the song. In a way the composer was not the point.
He simply provided the raw material for the singer who made it
his own. Whatever the song might be intrinsically worth, what
the audience heard was a work of art. Strangely, singers like
Gigli do not appear to have investigated Leoncavallo particularly,
with the obvious exception of "
Mattinata". I don't see
why most of these songs should not be "completed", as it were,
or elevated, made memorable, by an essentially personal approach.
It is perhaps a pity that Pavarotti, who could elevate lighter
fare this way, did not dedicate a little more time to promoting
Leoncavallo and such Italian repertoire generally, and a little
less to duetting with Laura Pausini, Zucchero et al. I really
don't know if there's a present-day singer who could do this.
The alternative is to treat the songs with the same respect you
give to great music. To sing Italian "romanze", that is to say,
the way Gérard Souzay sang French "mélodies". Possibly this would
produce higher rewards still, but so far no singer has come forward
able and willing to do it.
As things stand, I would say that the 19 songs set down by Fausto
Tenzi to reasonably good effect are enough to remind us that this
is a repertoire worth conserving. Those who want the songs "complete"
- apart from the ones that are missing - will get general satisfaction
from the baritone, inconsistent pleasure from the soprano and
a tenor to put in the dustbin. They will also find Prefumo's introduction
helpful but slightly less informative than that of Mirella Castiglioni
in the earlier disc. Whichever they choose they will get the original
texts without translations, and several cases of carelessness
on the new booklet. "
Mandolinata", "
Will nicht wissen"
and "
Invocation ŕ la Muse" each have a further stanza that
is sung but not printed. Conversely, stanzas of "
Prenez bien
garde ŕ mon oiseau" and "
Délivrance" are printed that
are not sung. Misprints abound and the sung text does not always
correspond to what is printed. In the last line of "
Pensiero",
for instance, Mezáros sings "
sussurrň"
instead of "rantolň".
Christopher Howell
Track listing
CD 1
Le chanson de Don Juan (3) [03:14]
Déclaration (2) [02:04]
Die Allmacht der Liebe (1) [04:13]
Si c'est aimer (1) [02:59]
Ninna-nanna (1) [04:17]
Prenez bien garde ŕ mon oiseau (1) [02:40]
Imploration éperdue (2) [02:15]
Sérénade Napolitaine (2) [03:49]
Tonight and Tomorrow (1) [03:20]
Barcarola - Notturno (1) [02:46]
October (3) [03:20]
Suzon (3) [02:17]
Ruit hora (3) [02:54]
Chitarretta (3) [02:45]
A Ninon (2) [03:16]
Meriggiata (2) [02:14]
La victoire est ŕ nous (2) [03:07]
Se! (1) [01:45]
Canzone d'amore (1) [02:36]
Pensiero (1) [03:06]
Serenatella (1) [02:15]
L'addio (3) [02:26]
Qu'ŕ jamais le soleil se voile (3) [02:41]
Délivrance - Hymne ŕ la France (1, 2, 3) [02:26]
CD 2
Lasciati amar (2) [02:47]
Mai fleuri (1) [03:49]
Un organetto suona per la via (1) [02:50]
Jeunesse et printemps (1) [03:15]
Je n'ai rien su (3) [02:18]
Sérénade française (3) [03:17]
La canzone della nonna (3) [05:24]
Madame, avisez-y (3) [02:18]
Mandolinata (2) [01:56]
C'č nel tuo sguardo (1) [02:11]
Will nicht wissen (1) [02:24]
L'Andalouse (2) [02:05]
Veux-tu (1) [02:14]
C'est le renouveau, ma Suzon (1) [02:44]
C'est bien toi (1) [02:14]
Vieni, amor mio (1) [02:33]
La chanson des yeux (3) [02:22]
Donna vorrei morir (3) [02:17]
Amore (3) [02:02]
Hua! Dia! Mon grison (2) [01:21]
Foglie d'autunno (1) [04:01]
Nuit de décembre (1) [03:10]
Aprile (1) [01:22]
C'était un ręve (3) [02:23]
Invocation ŕ la Muse (3) [04:01]
Mattinata (3) [03:05]
Mattinata (2) [02:07]
Barbara Meszáros (1, soprano),
Hector Sandoval (2, tenor), Luis Ledesma (3, baritone)
