Erich Wolfgang KORNGOLD (1897-1957)
Violanta (1916) [88.00]
Annemarie Kramer (soprano) – Violanta: Norman Reinhardt (tenor) – Alfonso: Michael Kupfer-Radecky (baritone) – Simone: Peter Sonn (tenor) – Brecca: Soula Parassidis (soprano) – Bice: Anna Maria Chiari (mezzo-soprano) – Barbara: Jean Folqué (tenor) – Matteo: Cristiano Olivieri (tenor), Gabriel Alexander Wernick (baritone) – Soldiers: Eugenia Braynova (soprano), Claudia de Pian (mezzo-soprano) – Maids: Chorus and Orchestra of Teatro Regio Torino/Pinchas Steinberg
rec. live, 21 and 23 January 2020, Teatro Regio Torino
DYNAMIC 57876 Blu-ray [88 mins]
I suspect that, like most of those who know this opera at all, my initial acquaintance with the score came with the CBS recording issued on LP in 1980 featuring the young Eva Marton and Siegfried Jerusalem in the leading roles, with such noted stalwarts of the German stage as Walter Berry and Ruth Hesse in supporting parts. I also suspect that, like most others at the time, I never expected to see the opera produced on stage or video. It suffered from the usual stigma which attached to one-act operas which are at the same time just too short to make up a whole evening in the theatre and too long and demanding to admit of being subsumed into a double-bill. It also demands a large romantic orchestra who are able to play a very complex score, and leading singers who can range from lyrical piano up to stentorian heroic fortissimo almost within the same phrase. None of these requirements are in plentiful supply, and we should therefore be grateful to the Turin Royal Theatre for their willingness to give the opera its first Italian performance – and at the same time to Dynamic, who have issued that same performance on Blu-Ray, DVD and CD.
It must be observed however that the casting in this new Italian recording is well below the standards set by CBS forty years ago. None of the singers here surpass their audio equivalents, I am afraid to say. By comparison with Walter Berry, Michael Kupfer-Radecky as the cuckolded husband begins with rather grey tone, none too steady of tuning, and only in the later stages when he begins to declaim with greater force does he bring much presence to his role. Anna Maria Chiuri also is not ideally steady, and her lullaby really demands more of the deep contralto tones that Ruth Hesse possesses in the audio recording. By comparison Peter Sonn comes over rather well, with a pleasant tenor voice with a nice sense of line; but his is not a very substantial part.
When he first arrives, the principal tenor Norman Reinhardt also sounds under some strain (his first high note offstage is delivered with force rather than subtlety); but when he reaches his aria Sterben wollt ich oft he suddenly develops a really engaging sense of line, a willingness to float high notes without punching them, and a sense of dramatic involvement which he retains throughout the remainder of the action. He is no Siegfried Jerusalem, whose voice when young had a richer sound than after his diet of Siegfrieds and Tristans had taken their toll; but he is personable enough to explain the heroine’s sudden and capricious change from hate to love. Unfortunately his paramour in the shape of Annemarie Kremer is very much the fly in the ointment of this performance. Eva Marton in the audio set was no model of steadiness or purity of tone, but here the heroine is even less palatable, with shrill high notes – not always secure of pitch – and a real lack of ability to sustain quiet passages, which is compounded by a want of sheer volume in other places where Korngold’s youthful exuberance causes him to indulge in some really over-heavy orchestration which masks the lower register of the singer’s voice.
Dramatically Violanta is not a great piece of theatre, a bizarre sort of hybrid between Wilde’s Florentine Tragedy (itself set by Zemlinsky a couple of years later) and the revenge-driven heroine of Strauss’s Elektra. The stage director here, Pier Luigi Pizzi, does what he can with the plot, even when the tenor at the end is absurdly given absolutely nothing to do or sing after his beloved is killed in his arms. Or the awkward pause when the two lovers at the end of their duet seem to just stand haplessly around awaiting the arrival of the incensed husband. The director’s own sets and costumes, updated to the time of the opera’s composition, generally work well, although there are a couple of moments when the singers seem confusedly to pick at their trails of flowing material, and the sense of Venetian atmosphere is confined to a single gondola which moves somewhat jerkily across the back of the stage at intervals. But Pizzi does nothing to interfere with the audience’s understanding of the action, and video director Matteo Ricchetti ensures that the cameras are generally pointing in the right places. The booklet notes, quite substantial, come in Italian and English; the subtitles are provided in the original German, Italian, English, French, Korean and Japanese.
One is left with a sense of both awe and wonder at the achievement of the teenage Korngold in his treatment of such an ‘adult’ subject, even though one marvels more at the assurance of the orchestration than his consideration for his singers. The real strength of this performance lies in the realisation of that orchestral score under the skilled and experienced baton of Pinchas Steinberg, who elicits generally superb and assured playing from his instrumentalists. Those who have enjoyed Marek Janowski’s speedier reading on the old CBS set will find this new recording repays investigation, and I don’t suppose we are likely to get any challengers along anytime soon. Potential purchasers should aim for the video rather than the audio.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
Previous review (DVD): Jim Westhead
