"Recorded 1959-1982" it says blandly;
yet with any artist – and singers above all – we surely have a
right to know if we are listening to early, middle or late work,
whether we should be rejoicing in the first blossoming of the
artist’s voice or whether we should be making allowances for the
passing of time. Whoever compiled this anthology must have had
some agenda in his mind, since he has given us excerpts from "Madame
Butterfly" from three different sources (the Leinsdorf items
are from a complete recording so why not just quarry that?); but
the backroom boys had another agenda on their table and the accompanying
material is miserable in the extreme. I presume the live recording
under Levine must be the one from 1982. It sounds like one of
those typical "gala occasions" where ageing stars stand
at opposite corners of the hall and bawl at each other over an
inattentive orchestra. You can hear that the voice had kept much
of its opulence but otherwise the thing is best passed over in
silence.
These recordings also bring together a number
of philosophies about how best to record a voice and orchestra.
The extracts under De Fabritiis come from an LP released in 1962
and are somewhat surprising for their date with an almost disconcertingly
natural balance. No attempt is made to bring out the voice which
reaches us (and occasionally doesn’t) from the midst of a dinosaur-sized
orchestra spread around a vast hall. The original performances
may have sounded this way but it’s different when you can see
the singer: the art of the recording engineer is to aid the listener’s
ear without his becoming aware of it. The Rome Opera Orchestra
obviously knew its Puccini inside out but the conductor makes
no attempt to bring any lift to the proceedings; it’s lush, plush
and shapeless. Oliviero De Fabritiis (1902-1982) did some good
work (including the 1938 "Tosca" with Gigli) but maybe
he’d reached his sell-by date by 1962. Still, it is worth hearing
Price. Flitting back to these recordings after the later ones
under Downes (the CD planner sees that we do this several times)
one is struck by an almost virginal, girlish purity in the voice,
which nevertheless soon reveals its opulence and burnished depth.
A very much more helpful balance is achieved
in the extracts under Downes, who offers the singer the fullest
collaboration. This means, basically, giving her all the space
she needs so that her rich tones get round the music without sounding
unwieldy, and at the same time tactfully keeping things going
so that tension does not sag as it did with De Fabritiis. The
not-so-common aria "Ore dolci e divine" from "La
Rondine", taken as a halting "valse triste", is
particularly gorgeous.
Fears that Francesco Molinari Pradelli (1911-1996)
might be as dead on his feet as De Fabritiis are fortunately unfounded.
Here we meet another recording philosophy, more typical of its
time (is this the one from 1959?); the voice is spotlighted with
the orchestra well behind. In view of the fact that Price was
sometimes held to have made a luscious sound without more than
dutiful attention to the words, it’s interesting to note that,
heard close up, she actually seems to be biting on her consonants
pretty strongly.
The outstanding item on the Puccini disc is the
extended sequence from the complete 1962 "Butterfly".
It can be heard that Richard Tucker was no longer a young man
(he was 49 with almost 20 years of heavyweight roles behind him)
but he offers many more honeyed tones than jaded ones. The real
hero is Leinsdorf, under whom singers and orchestra breathe as
one person, and who finds the exact meeting-point between forward
movement and flexibility, allowing the music to grow in long waves
that surge inexorably to an overwhelming climax. This is great
Puccini conducting, and the following extract under the more-than-able
Nello Santi brings us to earth with a bump.
Most of the Strauss disc has Leinsdorf at the
helm, but first a word about the "Ariadne" scene, which
contrasts strikingly with Price’s later version in the complete
set under Solti. This latter is considerably tauter, with attempts
at a detailed type of interpretation which might have become a
lighter voice à la Schwarzkopf but which here sound
ungainly and uncomfortable. The closing stages are particularly
unpleasant, little more than noise for the sake of noise. How
strange that such a distinguished conductor should have forced
a voice to go against its own nature. Under the far more sensitive
baton of Fausto Cleva, Price has all the time she needs to make
her points: a notable, if unusual, Strauss interpreter.
Whether in Boston or in London, Leinsdorf proves
as understanding and perceptive in Strauss as in Puccini, never
more so than in the Marschallin’s monologue. This is considerably
more spacious than either Reining or Schwarzkopf in the classic
versions under Erich Kleiber and Karajan. Schwarzkopf in particular
goes in for a lot of vocal characterisation which verges on the
mannered while both conductors keep their orchestra under a roseate
glow, avoiding very clear definition. Price relies much more on
singing the music, and allowing her own rich tones to tell
the story, while Leinsdorf profits from the extra space to give
a razor-sharp, Mozartian elegance to the orchestral writing, with
some weird and wonderful glissandos from the strings. I found
this quite remarkable and very much regret that it seems to be
from a disc of extracts not a complete recording of the opera.
The compilation closes with four lieder.
With the best will in the world, when a voice accustomed to filling
an opera house and to riding out an orchestra in full cry sings
chamber music, it’s difficult to avoid the feeling that a sledgehammer
is being taken to crack a nut, or that the voice is a blunter
instrument than it seemed in its natural habitat. A penny-in-the-slot
reaction, but I find it is true here, where thrilling moments
alternate with an excessive reliance on sheer heft.
If I’ve picked quite a lot of holes in this offering,
it remains true that this is one of the great voices of the 20th
century. She is the ideal singer for those who view opera as a
display of whopping big voices and one of the few whose high notes
do not leave me wondering if the composer might not have profitably
written the whole thing a tone or so lower. There was probably
more to her, but I doubt if a set like the present one is the
best way to appreciate that.
Christopher Howell
Leontyne Price (soprano),
Patricia Clark (soprano) (18), Rosalind Elias (mezzo-soprano) (12), Marilyn
Horne (mezzo-soprano) (14), Placido Domingo (tenor) (13), Richard Tucker
(tenor) (12), David Garvey (piano) (21), Boston Symphony Orchestra (16,
17), London Symphony Orchestra (13, 15), Metropolitan Orchestra (14), New
Philharmonia Orchestra (4, 5, 9, 11, 18-20), RCA Italiana Opera Orchestra
(8, 12), Rome Opera Orchestra (1-3, 6, 7, 10)/Fausto Cleva (15), Oliviero
De Fabritiis (1-3, 6, 7, 10), Edward Downes (4, 5, 9, 11), Erich Leinsdorf
(12, 16-20), James Levine (14), Francesco Molinari Pradelli (8), Nello Santi
(13)