When this arrived I glanced at "Cetra" and
at "Mario Rossi" and supposed this was the time-honoured 1956
performance which for many years remained the only one. The last twenty
years have seen a complete reassessment of Rossini’s final opera and
the several versions that have appeared, most notably under Gardelli,
Chailly and Muti, have adopted differing solutions to the question of
the text and the language but have in their various ways dispelled the
notion that the opera needs to be presented with the drastic cuts made
by Rossi (who was following a time-honoured tradition). That said, the
1956 set, tolerably recorded, remains valuable for the presence of Dietrich
Fischer-Dieskau as Guglielmo.
But, as you can see, this is another version under
Rossi and I was unaware of it. The first thing to be said is that this
is the untamed Cetra sound that made many collectors blench even back
in the 1950s and treat Cetra sets only as stopgaps for operas otherwise
unavailable. The voices are very close, very strong and with a cutting
edge. Way behind them is a very boxily recorded orchestra, again with
a strident treble and next to no bass. There is a fair amount of "wow"
in the orchestra but the voices are firm. I take it (without having
an original for comparison) that this has been transferred to CD "neat",
with no attempt to attenuate it. To be fair, I listened to the last
part on headphones and to my surprise, instead of boring a hole from
one side of my head to the other, the effect seemed a little more rounded.
Hitherto I had found it all too wearing to provide much enjoyment, but
my wife thoroughly enjoyed it downstairs so a possible expedient, if
you can’t tame it in your listening-room, would seem to be to shut the
doors and hear it in another room.
For the student of past performers, however, there
is quite a lot to be appreciated. First, Rossi’s conducting. He was
then 49 and in 1945 had been recommended by Toscanini for the post of
"Artistic Secretary" of La Scala. However, he preferred to
accept the RAI’s offer of the position of Artistic Director of their
Turin Symphony Orchestra, remaining there till 1969 and occupying in
post-war Italy a role comparable to that of Boult at the BBC in 1930s
and 1940s Britain. The portamento-laden cellos at the beginning of the
Prelude hark back to a pre-war style of orchestral playing in which
morbidezza was the keyword. By the same token he obtains an extraordinarily
poetic rendering of the shepherd’s song, free in expression but swift
in tempo. At the same time Rossi was working hard to bring the orchestra
up to an international standard and, if wholly accident-free horns are
too much to expect, there is sizzling vitality and striking accuracy
in the faster string-writing and a whiplash attack which makes moments
such as the ensemble which comes after "Resta immobile" thrilling
indeed. In the later recording he had the RAI’s somewhat lower-level
Milan orchestra and partly because of this and partly because it was
not "his" orchestra, he obtained a more generalised vitality.
Fischer-Dieskau’s Guglielmo remains a remarkable document,
his lieder-like care over the words in no way precluding a long Italianate
legato. Taddei offers a more "normal" assumption and a finely
authoritative one. He was by then 45 and on the way to becoming one
of the leading Italian baritones of his generation. His Met debut took
place that same year.
Carteri was about as close to a child prodigy as it
is possible to get in a profession which depends on physical maturity.
She began to study singing at the age of ten, made her debut in Lohengrin
when she was 19 (but I can’t tell you what her role was) and was 21
when she made this recording. The following year she appeared as Desdemona
at Salzburg and later Poulenc’s Gloria was written for her. Perhaps
all this happened too early, for my previous encounters with her were
somewhat later recordings, a passable Traviata made for television and
various re-broadcasts of RAI archive material which suggests that by
the 1960s she was inclined to sing flat, and in fact she faded out of
the scene after that time. Her Matilde is completely secure, her voice
ringing with youthful splendour. Carteri was one of the generation of
sopranos that lost out by that overwhelming presence of Callas that
only Tebaldi seemed able to resist, singers whom the world would have
welcomed with open arms at any other time. Another such was Anita Cerquetti
who took the part in 1956. Both are strong assets to their respective
recordings.
Unfortunately the 1956 set, once one has exhausted
one’s praise of Fischer-Dieskau, Cerquetti and Rossi himself, has a
cast made up of largely forgotten singers; mostly adequate, they do
nothing to suggest we should remember them any more than we do. The
present version has a fair list of distinguished names to follow. Filippeschi
may not have quite reached the "great" status, but he negotiates
a notoriously difficult role with technical ease and a good deal of
musicality. To have Tozzi and Corena in small parts (both were well-established
by then) is luxury casting, while Plinio Clabassi and Miti Truccato
Pace, stalwarts of many a RAI production, are thoroughly reliable. And
then we have the young Graziella Sciutti in a heavier role than those
she subsequently undertook. All-in-all, while the recording is too "historical"
in quality to make this a first, second or third choice, opera buffs
will find a number of fine and interesting performances here.
Christopher Howell
Turin RAI Chorus and Symphony
Orchestra/Mario Rossi