ESSENTIAL VERDI
Giuseppe VERDI
Rigoletto:
La donna è mobile (Luciano Pavarotti, London SO/Richard
Bonynge)
Nabucco: Va pensiero (Chicago SO & Chorus/Sir Georg
Solti)
La Forza del Destino: Overture (Kirov Orch/Valery
Gergiev)
La Traviata: Un dì felice (Dame Joan Sutherland, Carlo
Bergonzi, Florence May Festival Orch Chorus/Sir John
Pritchard)
I Vespri Siciliani: Mercè, dilette amiche (Maria Chiara,
Covent Garden Orch/Nello Santi)
La Traviata: Libiamo (Sutherland, Bergonzi, Florence MFO &
Chorus/Pritchard)
Il Trovatore: Di quella pira (José Carreras, Covent
Garden Orch & Chorus/Sir Colin Davis)
Il Trovatore: Vedi! Le fosche notturne spoglie (CSO &
Chorus/Solti)
Il Trovatore: Stride la vampa (Stefania Toczuska, Covent Garden
Orch & Chorus/Davis)
Aida: Ritorna vincitor! (Leontyne Price, Rome Opera House Orch
& Chorus/Solti)
Don Carlo: Dio, che nell'alma infondere (Carlo Bergonzi, Dietrich
Fischer-Dieskau, Covent |Garden Orch &
Chorus/Solti)
La Traviata: Prelude to Act 1 (Florence
MFO/Pritchard)
Rigoletto: Caro nome (Sutherland, LSO, Ambrosian Opera
Chorus/Bonynge)
Don Carlo: O don fatale (Olga Borodina, Covent Garden O/Bernard
Haitink)
Aida: Se quel guerrier… Celeste Aida (Bergonzi, Vienna
PO/Herbert von Karajan)
Ernani: Ernani! Ernani, involami (Sutherland, Paris Conservatoire
O/Santi)
Un Ballo in Maschera: Di tu se fedele (Jussi Björling,
Florence MFO/Alberto Erede)
Un Ballo in Maschera: Morrò, ma prima in grazia (Dame
Margaret Price, National PO/Solti)
Luisa Miller: Quando le sere al placido (Pavarotti, Vienna
Opera Orch/Sir Edward Downes)
Aida: Gloria all'Egitto; Grand March (CSO
&Chorus/Solti)
Requiem: Dies Irae (extract) (Vienna State Opera Chorus,
VPO/Solti)
La Forza del Destino: Pace, pace, mio Dio! (Angela Gheorghiu,
Milan G. Verdi SO/Riccardo Chailly)
Rigoletto: Questa o quella (Bergonzi, New Philharmonia
O/Santi)
Rigoletto: Bella figlia dell'amore (Sutherland, Huguette
Tourangeau, Pavarotti, Sherrill Milnes,
LSO/Bonynge)
Otello: Ave Maria (Renée Fleming,
LSO/Solti)
La Traviata: Parigi, o cara (Gheorghiu, Frank Lopardo, Covent
Garden O/Solti
Macbeth: Ah, la paterna mano (Pavarotti, Vienna Opera
O/Downes)
Il Trovatore: Squilli, echeggi la tromba guerriera (CSO &
Chorus/Solti)
Don Carlo: O Carlo, ascolta (Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Covent Garden
O/Haitink)
Requiem: Ingemisco (Pavarotti,
VPO/Solti)
Simon Boccanegra: Come in quest'ora bruna (Kiri Te Kanawa,
La Scala Orch/Solti)
Macbeth: Brindisi (Mara Zampieri, Renato Bruson, Neil Shicoff,
Lucia Aliberti, German Opera Orch & Chorus, Berlin/Giuseppe
Sinopoli)
Aida: O patria mia (L. Price, Rome OHO &
Chorus/Solti)
I Lombardi: La mia letizia infondere (Placido Domingo, Royal
PO/Lamberto Gardelli)
I Masnadieri: Lo sguardo avea degli angeli (Montserrat
Caballé, NPO/Gardelli)
La Forza del Destino: Solenne in quest'ora (Gegam Grigorian,
Nikolai Putin, Kirov O/Gergiev)
Macbeth: Patria oppressa (CSO &
Chorus/Solti)
Il Trovatore: Tacea la notte (Katia Ricciarelli, Covent Garden
O/Davis)
I Due Foscari: Dal più remoto esilio … O Dio solo,
ed odio atroce (Carreras, Mieczyslaw Antoniak, ORF SO & Chorus,
Vienna/Gardelli)
Don Carlo: Auto-da-fè Chorus (extract) (La Scala O &
Chorus/Gabriele Santini)
Decca - 4671282
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I have listed the contents of these two CDs item by item, with the performers
after each one, since any more rational grouping together might lead readers
into imagining that, well, items from the same opera appear together, maybe
even in the order in which they actually appear in the opera or some other
logical solution. But no, two Traviata duets really do frame the Bolero
from I vespri with a third duet on the other disc and taken from another
performance entirely, and two extracts (and again, there's a third on the
other disc) from the Davis Trovatore really do appear with a chorus
from the same opera conducted by Solti slipped in between.
I think that as far as the experienced collector is concerned (he will have
already noticed that the performances chosen are mostly fairly obvious ones)
the discs are self-commenting, but for the man who is starting to know classical
music and wondering if Verdi is for him, this is a listener-friendly sequence
which gives a fair idea of the riches which both the composer and many of
his most celebrated interpreters over the last 40-odd years have to offer.
One of the greatest Verdi singers is missing for obvious contractual reasons,
namely Maria Callas (she was an EMI artist); yet I suspect the compiler of
being an out-and-out Callas fan, for otherwise how extraordinary it is that
we have not a note from Renata Tebaldi, Callas's arch rival and a mainstay
of Decca's operatic catalogue for over twenty years.
A mainstay of the Decca catalogue for much longer than that was Sir Georg
Solti, and it seems somehow typical that his name appears complete with
knighthood on all the fourteen items he conducts, whereas Davis, Downes and
Pritchard are shorn of theirs, as are Margaret Price, Sutherland and Te Kanawa
of their Damehoods. Davis's Trovatore has been described as laid back,
yet Di quella pira provides some of the most exciting conducting on
the discs (though Carreras is sadly over-parted), and it is the following
Solti-led chorus which is well and truly laid back. Solti was very much the
elder statesman of music by the time he made his Chicago collection of Verdi
choruses, and extracts from it crop up like weary milestones all through
the set. Decca has in its vaults a collection of Verdi choruses under Carlo
Franci which has real Italian blood in it (as has the chorus from Don
Carlo conducted by Santini) and which might profitably have been used
instead. The much earlier blood-and-guts Solti can be heard in the two
Aida excerpts. Leontyne Price's voice is thrilling to hear, but in
Ritorna vincitor she and Solti seem hell-bent on seeing who can make
the most noise. In the end he does, but it's a close-run thing. Even in the
quieter music towards the end her line is bumpy. O patria mia is
emphatically more successful. With much more delicate orchestral writing
she regains her poise. It's still a whopping voice, but it has the essential
grease-paint people go to the theatre for and is one of the set's highlights.
Solti-bashing can be a pleasing sport, but between these extremes he did
much distinguished work, not least the Vienna Requiem from which we
get a thrilling (but not overdriven) extract from the Dies Irae and
a further extract which leads us to another Decca mainstay, Luciano Pavarotti.
Pavarotti has become one of those figures the cognoscenti love to
hate, but the Requiem movement gives us prime Pavarotti, a glorious timbre
used to finely musical effect. The same may be said of the two arias from
the recital under Downes, but even the later Rigoletto extracts find
him in fine fettle (the quartet is splendidly launched). Of the other tenors
it is always a pleasure to hear Bergonzi, whether in duet with Sutherland
(of whom more later) or on his own, notably in a seamless Celeste Aida.
It is a pity we only get one reminder, in a little-known aria, that Domingo
has been one of the most musicianly and well-schooled tenors of recent years.
The item from I due Foscari gives more evidence than that from
Trovatore of the fresh, bright timbre with which Carreras attracted
audiences at the beginning of his career, but truth to tell there are signs
of forcing even here. In the Björling item the engineers have brightened
up the sound of the elderly recording far too much and I didn't enjoy this
as much as I had hoped.
Not long ago I was reviewing a 1960 recital by Joan Sutherland which included
a superb Caro nome. The recording under Bonynge was a late venture
and the voice is notably darker at the beginning. But her technical armoury
is unimpaired and, while the earlier version (or that from the early 60s
set conducted by Nino Sanzogno) might have been preferred, this is still
an astonishingly fine performance. Her Traviata extracts are also
very fine (the beautifully-shaped Prelude under Pritchard reminds us that
this was a distinguished set) and the Ernani aria, from another early
recital, contains so much that is quite fabulous that I am at a loss to explain
a couple of somewhat ungainly high Cs. Of the other big names Caballé,
in a very rare piece, shows her warm tones to good advantage and reveals
almost unbelievable control in her cadenza. Margaret Price provides a wealth
of fine shading in her aria from Ballo but Kiri Te Kanawa makes rather
heavy weather of the Boccanegra excerpt. It is a pleasure to hear
a little-remembered soprano, Maria Chiara, making light of the difficulties
of Mercé, dilette amiche, but one also notes an unsteadiness
to the voice-production which perhaps explains why her international career
was not long. Will future critics be saying the same of Angela Gheorghiu?
However attractive her timbre may be in much of Pace, pace, mio Dio,
there is a fundamental unsteadiness which is even more noticeable in the
Traviata duet. Renée Fleming seems to have a much firmer technical
backup, and I venture to suggest she will stay the course.
Lower voices are not much in evidence in this collection though Hvorostovsky's
account of the death of Rodrigo provides some compensation. And to end, as
I began, with the conductors, Sinopoli gives a fizzing account of the
Macbeth extract and those who look at the timing of Gergiev's
Forza Overture and imagine a space-rocket account are reassured that
this is a shorter version of the piece than we usually hear and the tempi
are quite normal. A note to explain this? No notes, let alone texts, accompany
this pair of discs, but as an introduction to the range of music to be found
in Verdi they can be safely bought.
Christopher Howell
