Guild Music has an association with Immortal Performances
which has an archive of first-generation historic broadcasts from
the 1930s and 1940s. This initial release (the others are a 1943 Figaro,
a 1937 Siegfried, and Act 2 of Parsifal from 1938) sets
a standard hard to beat. All the discs are transfers from the original
transcription discs' master tapes. Transcripts of the complete Toscanini
broadcasts from the same period are also planned. So too is a complete
and mouth-wateringly cast Ring, of which Siegfried forms
a segment.
Pace Ezio Pinza, Alexander Kipnis, and Boris
Christoff, there has never been, neither before or since, a greater
exponent of the role of Boris than Chaliapin and this is a wonderful
testimony to his portrayal. Despite the length of the cast (and the
fact that, as Italians, they all sing in Italian, while he sings in
his native Russian) it is Chaliapin who dominates it all. His prayer,
farewell and death are totally riveting and agonising despite the passage
of time - 64 years - which has elapsed. Apart from the excellent chorus
no one comes within touching distance of even a mention. My one regret
is that the conductor is not Albert Coates with whom Chaliapin had a
singular rapport and whose interpretation of the opera was second to
none. Though some at the time may have said that Chaliapin's voice had
lost some of the quality it had possessed in the Beecham days of Drury
Lane fifteen years earlier, all clearly marvelled at the nobility of
the sound, the acutely dramatic realisation of the character, and the
magnetic force which exerted itself on all around him, whether on stage
or in the auditorium. He lived and breathed Boris and listening to this
disc brings images to mind of Ivan the Terrible as portrayed in the
Eisenstein films of the day. Chaliapin was a larger than life character
who sang and acted a compelling and immortal performance, and this is
what communicates down the decades. There is a remarkable feeling of
understatement in his portrayal, small gestures, mezza voce, but full
of intensity and laser-focused in sound. His death scene runs the full
gauntlet of emotion, crazed, angry, fearful, remorseful in prayer but
never losing eloquence. This has been a labour of love by the Guild
team, Richard Caniell, with the aid of Keith Hardwick who supplied the
missing Pimen Narrative, which was not recorded at the Covent Garden
performance but taken from one sung elsewhere by Nicola Moscona. The
source and restoration process is interestingly set out in an essay
and reveals which parts have never been heard since 1928. It must have
been the experience of a lifetime to have been there to hear it live,
but we must now be grateful to Guild for recreating it for us today.
Christopher Fifield
See letter recieved from Richard Caniell regarding
the Guild Historical Series
Vincenzo Bellezza (conductor)