You’d expect there to be a lot to say about this but
actually there isn’t much. In a way the small print on the back (always
take a magnifying glass with you when you visit a record shop) says
it all: "The technical imperfections of the original recording
mean that the sound quality of this live performance is not of the overall
standard normally to be expected". To begin with it might seem
that they are exaggerating. The orchestra sounds like a 1930s film soundtrack,
to be sure, but the voices, even though accompanied by the persistent
rattle of mild distortion, stand out with a certain clarity. But then
on comes Del Monaco and the poor microphones hit their high from the
word go. It really is impossible to form any sort of judgement of his
singing of "Un dì all’azzurro spazio". Microphone levels
seem to have been adjusted after the First Act and much of the singing
can be appreciated though explosive patches are always lying in wait
and the other seriously compromised aria (it would have to hit the two
most famous pieces, wouldn’t it?) is "La mamma morta".
Nothing is said about the provenance of this recording,
which has been circulating in bootleg versions for almost as long as
boots have been going on legs, with so many copies of copies of copies
that I wonder if anyone really knows who had it first. It wasn’t recorded
by somebody sitting in the audience, since the rapturous applause is
actually rather distant, so it’s "off the air", but any hopes
that an official EMI issue might have had access to "official"
Italian Radio tapes can be forgotten about; presumably such tapes do
not exist. The fact that a performance was broadcast does not necessarily
mean that the radio station in question recorded the performance too,
since broadcasting and recording rights are very different things. So
all the EMI imprimatur means is that everything that can be done to
improve the sound has been tried; but it was a pretty hopeless task.
Of course, it’s easy to see why fans of Maria Callas
would want to hear the performance willy-nilly. John Steane’s note tells
in full the story of how she learnt the role in five days when she was
expecting to sing "Trovatore"; Mario Del Monaco had declared
himself indisposed and unable to cope with Manrico, but willing to sing
Chénier. It has been suggested that he feared being upstaged
by Callas if he sang Manrico to her Leonora, while it is difficult for
a tenor to be upstaged by Maddalena, whoever sings the part. In any
case, it was not in Callas’s repertoire so she would have no alternative
but to bow out (so the reasoning went) and leave the stage clear for
the more docile Tebaldi who was well known in the part (which she had
recorded for Cetra in 1953 - I
reviewed a reissue of this not long ago: Warner-Fonit 8573 87486-2
– and which she sang 88 times during her career). But Callas was not
so easily thrust aside and so came about this run of the only six performances
she ever gave – here we have the first – as Maddalena.
Before dealing with Callas, let’s say something about
"the others", especially when this is a tenor’s opera anyway.
Leaving aside "Un dì", the sheer generosity of Mario
Del Monaco’s full-throated timbre can be heard, and he is not entirely
bereft of softer tones. "Come un bel dì" begins gently
and builds up well. His entry "Ora soave" following Maddalena’s
"Eravate possente" has the right emotional heft without any
forcing of the tone. If you compare this moment on the 1953 Tebaldi
recording the sheer inadequacy of the tenor José Soler’s voice
is cruelly shown up. However, it is not for Del Monaco that people are
going to put up with the poor sound on this issue since he recorded
the role in stereo for Decca in 1957 with Tebaldi and Bastianini and
with Gianandrea Gavazzeni conducting, so I will leave any further discussion
of his assumption of Chénier for a reissue of that recording
(which seems not to be available at the moment).
Aldo Protti (b. 1920) had a pretty distinguished career
lasting from 1949 to at least the early 1980s. He had been appearing
at La Scala since 1950 and had a repertoire of some 50 roles, of which
Rigoletto was a particular speciality. He can be heard on a number of
recordings, mostly for Decca, including the Tebaldi/Del Monaco/Karajan
"Otello", but doesn’t seem to have recorded Gérard
"officially". Gérards, like Scarpias, tend to bark
at times and Protti is no exception. However, in view of the microphone’s
way of compounding this with distortion of its own perhaps it is better
to remember him by his properly recorded roles especially when, though
good, he hardly seems out of the ordinary here.
Smaller roles are as idiomatically taken as you would
expect from an Italian opera given in Italy’s premier opera house and
Antonino Votto, often a slack conductor in the studio, is quite remarkably
vital, to the extent of making me revise my opinion of him. Even so,
other better recorded "Chéniers" have been well conducted
too.
And so to Callas. She did, of course, leave us a studio
recording of "La mamma morta", and nothing in that very perfunctory
rendering suggests that she had any great feeling for the role. She
is certainly a good deal more intense in that aria here, but even so,
if you put her alongside the 1953 Tebaldi you will hear a much more
detailed response to the text. At times Tebaldi is quite heartrending
(try "E Bersi, buona e pura") where Callas is seemingly giving
us a compendium of her well-known roles. As love answers, you can hear
the quotation marks in Tebaldi’s performance and she builds up steadily
to a climax whereas Callas goes at full tilt from the start. The sheer
splendour of Tebaldi’s vocal instrument gives overwhelming impact to
the climax. When Callas is engaged she can create a frisson by
living dangerously; in this instance, better call a spade a spade and
say she screams horribly (both in studio and in the theatre).
However, in "Eravate possente", which finds
Tebaldi (in 1953) in slightly aggressive mood, the differences are smaller
and she produces many illuminating moments along the way, even if they
continue to remind us of her other more famous roles rather than this
one. The last scene does have that something-or-other which only happens
in the theatre, with Callas and Del Monaco really striking sparks of
each other and Votto incandescent in the pit. The 1953 recording, very
well conducted by Arturo Basile, is relatively studio-bound here, not
least because Tebaldi’s main concern seems to be to show Soler what
real singing means.
Seriously, I hope that first-time buyers will not see
this set in the shops and get it, vaguely supposing that the "Callas
version" is a safe bet; this is strictly for specialists. The principal
modern versions are the Caballé/Pavarotti/Nucci/Chailly on Decca
and Scotto/Domingo/Milnes/Levine on RCA, which allows you to choose
your favourite tenor of today. If your hero among the "three tenors"
is Carreras, then he recorded the role for Sony with Eva Marton and
Giorgio Zancanaro under Giuseppe Patané, a version for which
few have professed much love. Going further back I repeat my request
for a reissue of the 1957 Tebaldi/Del Monaco, and Franco Corelli fans
will remember his version with Antonietta Stella and Mario Sereni under
Gabriele Santini. And, further back still, there is the pre-war Gigli,
with Maria Caniglia and Gino Bechi conducted by Oliviero De Fabritiis.
Del Monaco can also be seen on a film made for Italian television in
the 1950s and reissued by the Bel Canto Society; he is partnered by
Stella and Giuseppe Taddei and the conductor is Angelo Questa. I can’t
tell you which of the above are available at this particular time, but
these things come and go pretty rapidly. All of them, as well as the
1953 Tebaldi, are surely preferable to the present in view of the sonic
limitations surrounding what is after all a half-baked assumption by
the leading lady.
Christopher Howell
Mario Del Monaco (Andrea
Chénier), Maria Callas (Maddalena di Coigny), Aldo Protti (Carlo
Gérard), Silvana Zanolli (Bersi), Maria Amadini (Contessa di Coigny),
Lucia Danieli (Madelon), Enrico Campi (Roucher), Enzo Sordello (Fléville)