Depending on which way you look at it, this is either a refreshingly
eclectic Verdi compilation or a rather cynical cobble-job trying to
cash in on the bicentenary of his birth. As ever, the truth is to
be found somewhere in between but I do think it shockingly cavalier
of Preiser to go to the trouble of commissioning some funky artwork,
biographical data and a lively introductory essay by Laura Wagner-Semrau,
both in German and translated into English, only to provide no information
regarding the individual tracks beyond the singers and the label and
year of issue of the recording concerned. Thus, unless, like me, you
fancy yourself as a bit of a Verdi recording aficionado and can make
some informed guesses, you do not know if the aria, duet or ensemble
in question is from a live radio broadcast, a recital album or a complete
studio recording or who is conducting which orchestra. Furthermore,
I am dubious whether some of the scanty information provided is correct;
I am sure that the track 4 “Macbeth” aria is not from the RCA studio
recording conducted by Leinsdorf or from any of the live broadcasts
about that time; it is obviously from earlier in Leonard Warren’s
career when his baritone was younger, fresher and more tenorial. He
concludes with the free top A for which he was famous, yet his tone
still contains traces of an oddly constricted quality.
So, those complaints aside, what do we have here? All the recordings
were made between 1914 and 1962, are thus conveniently out of copyright
and must therefore now be regarded as historical - so don’t by any
means expect uniformly brilliant sound. They include some outright
classics of the gramophone with which every Verdi enthusiast will
be familiar: the duets from “Otello” by Caruso and Ruffo, from “Don
Carlo” by Björling and Merrill and from “La forza del destino” with
Rosa Ponselle and Ezio Pinza, the latter in surprisingly good sound
for 1928, both voices emerging as true, pure and warm. There are several
recordings of arias which are celebrated tours de forces,
such as Tito Gobbi’s incomparable “Pari siamo”, Callas’ lapidary “Sempre
libera” from her only complete studio recording on Cetra, and a stunning
“Mercè, dilette amici” by a young Joan Sutherland. There are two of
the finest ensembles ever recorded in the 1939 “Plebe! Patrizi! Popolo!”
with Tibbet, Bampton and Martinelli, and the “Bella figlia dell’amore”
quartet from the complete 1950 “Rigoletto” with Warren again – the
only artist to feature twice on these two discs – and Jan Peerce in
tremendous voice.
The bulk of these recordings is from the 1940 and 1950s; one is acoustic,
some electronic 78s, some mono, some stereo – but you have to use
your ears to guess as Preiser’s not telling. They present an incongruous
range of sound quality, dynamic range, volume and acoustic which will
leave you fiddling with the remote control with every change of track.
The 29 tracks encompassing fourteen operas – that is about half Verdi’s
output and those generally considered to be his major works – are
represented as are 38 different voices: ten sopranos, four mezzo-sopranos,
thirteen tenors, eight baritones and three basses; 23 of those singers
– nearly two-thirds - are Italian; I wonder what the proportion would
be today if we tried to assemble a similar anthology? What are decent
but decidedly also-ran-category singers such as Giacinto Pradelli,
Carlo Tagliabue, Margherita Grandi and – dare I say it, in this particular
context? – Alfredo Kraus doing in such august Verdian company? The
cartoonish but quite eye-catching cardboard packaging with its splashy
green lettering and a booklet insert successfully shakes off the Preiser
label’s rather staid and conservative image.
For those unfamiliar with some of the singers here such as Anita Cerquetti,
recordings like her opening aria from “Nabucco” will be a revelation;
in her very short career she was spoken of in the same breath as Tebaldi
and Callas, and it is easy to hear why. Grandi’s account of the Sleepwalking
Aria from “Macbeth” is impressive in its way, especially the astounding
pianissimo high D upon which she exits, apparently produced almost
closed-mouthed, Calvé-style, but comparison with Callas’s famous version
makes Grandi sound rather ordinary and even matronly of tone compared
with the “voice of a she-devil” Verdi required. Alfredo Kraus really
milks his “Parmi veder le lagrime” at too slow a speed and it’s a
relief to move from his reedy, plaintive musings to Jan Peerce’s much
more rakish, Italianate Duke in the splendid quartet I have already
mentioned. Bergonzi sings aristocratically and deploys an elegant
trill in his aria from “Il trovatore”, then another true Italian tenor
and Toscanini’s favourite, Aureliano Pertile employs his powerful
top B and C to great effect in “Di quella pira”.
On the second CD, we first hear an oddly restrained and somewhat distantly
recorded Giulietta Simionato in an excerpt presumably taken from the
complete 1960 Solti recording - as we hear a snippet sung by the unmistakable
but uncredited Bergonzi - then another aria from that opera by Giuseppe
Di Stefano in finest voice, clearly from a radio broadcast before an
enthusiastic audience. Yet another great Verdi tenor, Franco Corelli,
demonstrates the knife-edge vibrancy – the vibrato had still to settle
in the mid-fifties – and splendid ring of his top B-flats in the immensely
taxing aria from “La forza del destino”. Cesare Siepi’s majestic,
saturnine bass is ideal for delineating King Philip’s anguish and
Stignani shows off her extraordinary range in Eboli’s “O don fatale”
from “Don Carlo”. The switch to stereo for Del Monaco’s “Celeste Aida”
is welcome; he, too, shows off his tremendous B-flats and sheer volume
of sound. As always when I listen to Zinka Milanov, an artist much
revered by generations previous to mine, I find her patchy: to me
her Aida mixes melting passages with others which sound somewhat swoopy,
unsteady and too mature. The inclusion of so early a recording as
the “Otello” duet is justified by its extraordinary intensity and
the supreme vocalisation of the ideal partnership of Caruso and Ruffo,
later emulated and almost equalled by Björling and Merrill in the
same music on the RCA recital from which their “Don Carlo” duet discussed
above was taken.
The inclusion of Melchior is a little surprising given his indelible
association with Wagner, but he sang Verdi’s dramatic tenor roles
and although I don’t much appreciate “Otello” in German, it serves
to illustrate both his aptitude for the role and how Verdi was for
decades sung mainly in translation in opera houses across Germany.
Especially striking are the long crescendo phrase beginning at 2:51,
Melchior’s soft top G and, in common with every other tenor in this
collection, his capability of delivering whopping top B-flats – in
the end, a note more frequently important to the big-voiced Verdi
tenor than the elusive top C.
We conclude with two more indisputably great Verdi voices: Renata
Tebaldi’s prayer aptly confirming Toscanini’s verdict on her as having
“una voce d’angelo” and Taddei’s pungent baritone whooping it up as
Falstaff in the Honour Monologue – but in rather poor sound.
In many ways, this sort of thing has been done before - not least
by Membran themselves in their “Quadromania” series. For all its vocal
splendours, this bargain vintage compendium can also be seen as a
lament for a lost age and tradition; we shall certainly never again
hear the likes of most of these singers.
Ralph Moore
Detailed Contents List
Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901)
A Tribute to Giuseppe Verdi - Selected recordings
1914-1962
CD1
1. Nabucco: Ben io t´invenni... Anch´io dischiuso [7:15]
2. Ernani: Gran Dio!... O de´ verd´anni miei [4:29]
3. Macbeth: Una macchia è qui tutt´ora [7:39]
4. Macbeth: Pietà, rispetto, amore [3:28]
5. Luisa Miller: O fede negar... Quando le sere [4:32]
6. Rigoletto: Pari siamo [3:59]
7. Rigoletto: Ella mi fù rapita... Parmi veder le lagrime
[5:45]
8. Rigoletto: Un dì se ben... Bella figlia dell´amore [5:20]
9. Il Trovatore: Stride la vampa [2:54]
10. Il Trovatore: Ah si, ben mio [3:03]
11. Il Trovatore: Di quella pira [3:04]
12. La Traviata: Ah fors´è lui... Sempre libera [9:26]
13. La Traviata: Parigi, o cara [3:35]
14. I Vespri Siciliani: Mercè, dilette amiche [3:31]
15. Simon Boccanegra: Plebe, patrizi, popolo [5:09]
Anita Cerquetti (soprano) (1); Carlo Tagliabue (baritone) (2); Margherita
Grandi (soprano) (3); Leonard Warren (baritone) (4); Giacinto Prandelli
(tenor) (5); Tito Gobbi (baritone) (6); Alfredo Kraus (tenor) (7);
Jan Peerce (tenor), Leonard Warren (baritone), Erna Berger (soprano)
and Nan Merriman (mezzo) (8); Feodora Barbieri (mezzo) (9); Carlo
Bergonzi (tenor) (10); Aureliano Pertile (tenor) (11); Maria Calla
(soprano) (12); Amelita Galli-Curci (soprano) and Tito Schipa (tenor)
(13); Joan Sutherland (soprano) (14); Lawrence Tibbett (baritone),
Giovanni Martinelli (tenor) and Rose Bampton (soprano) (15).
CD 2
1. Un Ballo in Maschera: Re dell´abisso [6:11]
2. Un Ballo in Maschera: Forse la soglia... Ma se m´è forza
perderti [5:27]
3. La Forza del Destino: Alzatevi... La Vergine degli angeli
[4:34]
4. La Forza del Destino: La vita è inferno... O tu che in
seno [6:49[
5. La Forza del Destino: Urna fatale [5:16]
6. Don Carlo: È lui desso... Dio, che nell´alma infondere
[7:02[
7. Don Carlo: Ella giammai m´amò... Dormirò sol [7:40]
8. Don Carlo: O don fatale [4:35]
9. Aida: Se quel guerrier... Celeste Aida [4:24]
10. Aida: Qui Radames verrà... O patria mia [6:35]
11. Otello: Si pel ciel [4:45]
12. Otello: Dio mi potevi [4:48]
13. Otello: Ave Maria [4:47]
14. Falstaff: L´onore, ladri! [4:17]
Giulietta Simionato (mezzo) (1); Giuseppe Di Stefano (tenor) (2);
Rosa Ponselle (soprano) and Ezio Pinza (bass) (3); Franco Corelli
(tenor) (4); Ettore Bastianini (baritone) (5); Jussi Björling (tenor)
and Robert Merrill (baritone) (6); Cesare Siepi (bass) (7); Ebe Stignani
(mezzo) (8); Mario Del Monaco (tenor) (9); Zinka Milanov (soprano)
(10); Enrico Caruso (tenor) and Titta Ruffo (baritone) (11); Lauritz
Melchior (tenor) (12); Renata Tebaldi (soprano) (13); Giuseppe Taddei
(baritone) (14).
Various conductors and orchestras.
rec. 1914 – 1962. ADD
PREISER RECORDS PR93484 [73:20 + 77:19]
