Gaetano DONIZETTI (1797-1848)
Lucia di Lammermoor (1835)
Renata Scotto (soprano) - Lucia
Giuseppe Di Stefano (tenor) - Edgardo
Ettore Bastiannini (baritone) - Enrico
Ivo Vinco (bass) - Raimondo
Stefania Malagł (mezzo-soprano) - Alisa
Franco Ricciardi (tenor) - Arturo
Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro alla Scala/Nino Sanzogno
rec. 25 August-1 September 1959, Teatro alla Scala, Milan
ADD stereo
PRISTINE AUDIO PACO186 [53:40 + 58:18]
According to the notes provided by sound engineer Mark Obert-Thorn, this recording, now well over sixty years old, was originally made by Mercury Records for the music publisher Ricordi. It has often mistakenly been attributed as a live recording but it is studio-made and has until now never been satisfactorily remastered for issue on CD; this certainly does so. There is still a fair amount of background rustle but the stereo separation is pleasingly apparent and some warmth and ambiance have been imparted to what was a dry recording.
We first hear Ettore Bastiannini in spectacular voice – gloriously loud and sometimes almost crude but the role of the brutal, sneering Enrico is itself not subtle and the music demands to be trumpeted; two excerpts from this recording were included in Urania’s issue of arias sung by him, which I reviewed back in 2009; remarking that he “might not always have been the most nuanced of artists but the splendour of his baritone carries all before.” He lets fly with top Gs and sings with complete abandon. Despite the splendour of his voice, he could sometimes sound bored and routine, but that is not the case here.
Scotto makes her entrance after some lovely harp-playing. She is in her best youthful period here at only twenty-five years old, when she was still a coloratura soprano and before she moved into the verismo roles which eventually rendered her voice raw and unsteady. Her voice is rather piping and disembodied and her characterisation is perhaps a bit anonymous but that conveys Lucia’s other-worldliness and there is some lower register development to balance the rather thin top Ds. She was of course always a fine vocal actress and there is a nice touch in the production where the tearing open of the forged letter is audible, followed by Scotto singing of her despair in blanched, plaintive tones. Her Mad Scene is flawlessly vocalised in that unearthly manner which misses the individuality of Callas, Moffo and Sutherland but constitutes admirable singing, as long as you respond to her persistently bright timbre – and I would not say that her concluding top E is pretty.
For Giuseppe Di Stefano, this was a stereo remake of his mono studio recording of Lucia six years previously with Callas and Gobbi – and probably the latest he should and could have done justice to the role of Edgardo, as although he was only in his late thirties, his voice was fast hardening and coarsening through over-singing, so while he would go on to sing Calaf and Cavaradossi successfully for a few years more, his suitability for bel canto parts was beginning to desert him. His tenor was never as intrinsically honied or refined as Pavarotti’s or Tagliavini’s, but he certainly sounds to be in confident voice here, with very little forcing apparent and his first aria, “Sulla tomba” is virile yet delicate, with secure, ringing B-flats and his outrage in the wedding scene is convincingly impassioned, without undue strain. The final, dismal tomb scene finds him again in fine, plangent voice, investing the words with deep emotion and managing the high-flying passages by the “beautiful shouting” which typified Di Stefano’s inimitable manner.
Sanzogno does everything right, the chorus is lusty and the orchestral playing is excellent. The famous sextet is a complete success.
The supporting roles don’t have so much to do but Ivo Vinco’s big, black bass is always a welcome presence and his singing of “Dalle stanze” is a masterclass of firm tone and seamless legato. Stefania Malagł was always a reliable singer. Franco Ricciardi is an excellent, clear-voiced Arturo - but curiously, the role of Normanno is not credited. The CLOR opera discography notes “It is sometimes stated the Giuseppe di Stefano also sings Normanno” but anyone with half an ear can hear that is not the case. My ears suggest that as this was a studio recording and not, as was often thought, a live performance, Franco Ricciardi simply doubled up the roles, which makes sense – and to confirm that, the 2009 Myto issue does indeed name him as Normanno, while Wikipedia names both roles as being in his repertoire.
This is subject to most of the “standard cuts” of the era, hence its running time of well under two hours but must at least be considered as a supplement to complete, modern versions such as my own favourite, the Decca issue with Sutherland and Pavarotti.
Ralph Moore
