The booklet contains
an essay by Richard Osborne entitled
"Prêtre conducts Werther",
and there is the rub. Such accompanying
essays are obviously not the place for
detailed and damning criticism and Osborne,
knowing which side his bread is buttered,
limits himself to remarking that "Georges
Prêtre has been criticised for
being too headstrong at times, but he
understands most of the secrets of the
Massenet cuisine". In all truth
EMI would have done better to bill the
set in capital letters "PRÊTRE
CONDUCTS WERTHER" and put Massenet’s
own name in a discreet position lower
down the list, for that is what it amounts
to.
Georges Prêtre
(b.1924) has always been something of
a dark horse among French conductors,
at least in the United Kingdom. His
no-holds-barred, often fraught and intensely
personal interpretations are, rather
like those of Charles Munch, the opposite
of what the likes of Monteux or Martinon
trained us to expect of a French conductor
– and this in spite of his early association
with Poulenc, of several of whose works
he gave the first performance. The British
public has largely resolved the enigma
by ignoring him, but this attitude is
merely insular when critical opinion
in many other countries would put him
in the "great" bracket. His
most distinguished period was probably
his conductorship of the Vienna Symphony
Orchestra and his most notable contributions
to recorded music those few where he
has been allowed to belie "horses
for courses" typecasting and record
German music. The Italian Nuova Era
company once planned a Beethoven cycle
from Prêtre and the VSO; to judge
from a broadcast "Eroica"
I heard from them around the time of
that announcement, we may be the poorer
for its non-realisation.
In the present case
there are many conspicuous gains. At
least the music really and truly is
conducted. Every phrase is welded
into a paragraph and every paragraph
clearly leads the ear onwards towards
the next climax, or is equally clearly
dying away from the last one. The orchestral
colours are mixed and balanced to produce
a continual kaleidoscope of sound. If
he were conducting a Richard Strauss
tone-poem I would have nothing more
to say but, strangely for a man whose
earliest conducting posts were all in
opera houses, he seems to expect the
singers to fit in willy-nilly. His brazen
climaxes are appallingly inconsiderate
and when we hear such an experienced
singer and vocal stylist as Nicolai
Gedda fairly bawling his head off to
be heard above them, we can only wonder
that such an unsuitable conductor was
chosen.
Richard Osborne, by
the way, quotes some fairly enthusiastic
comments which appeared in "Gramophone";
since he does not reproduce the critics’
observations regarding Prêtre’s
contribution, I will do so myself. Alan
Blyth noted that the "ludicrously
fast tempo" of J’aurais sur
ma poitrine "sorely taxes"
Gedda, that Prêtre "is a
very committed conductor" though
"he is inclined to indulge in that
pulling about of the music that so disfigured
RCA’s Traviata" and felt
that "on constant re-playings his
rather excited reading might prove irksome"
(October 1969). In his quarterly retrospect
of January 1970 Desmond Shawe-Taylor
returned to the attack, finding this
"another HMV/Angel set which is
affected by the vagaries of the conductor".
He praised the opening scene but noted
that at many other points "Prêtre
whips up the speed to a level that is
not only wildly at variance with the
metronome markings, but makes it impossible
for the singers to enunciate with clarity
or point". In all fairness, however,
the often tetchy EMG Monthly Letter
of October 1969 found Prêtre’s
performance "idiomatic and, in
the main, faithfully reflects the changing
moods of the score".
Is all lost? No, for
while the orchestral opposition creates
a few problems for Gedda, much of the
score is of a gentle nature and here
his honeyed tones come into their own,
as does his psychological understanding
of the part. In terms of style this
is maybe a midway point between the
traditionally more nasal French tenor,
who would very likely have used more
head voice in his top notes, and the
Italian style (i.e. à la Puccini:
a 1951 La Scala Performance in Italian
under Capuana with Tagliavini and Simionato
is sometimes broadcast by Italian Radio
and is available from bootleg sources).
But the traditional French style proved
unable to gain the opera a place on
the international stage and Gedda’s
assumption was therefore historically
important in establishing the piece
in the repertoire.
Charlotte was Victoria
de los Angeles’s last complete recorded
role and one which she had very much
wished to undertake. Charlotte is, of
course, a mezzo role and, pace Blyth
and Shawe-Taylor who found the role
well suited to her voice "in its
present state" (both critics used
this phrase), an ageing soprano whose
top notes are not quite what they were
is not the same thing as a real mezzo.
De los Angeles does many very lovely
things and her dulcet tones contrast
well with Mady Mesplé’s bright
and girlish Sophie, but down in the
lower octave she lacks the resonance
of a true mezzo, who would presumably
engage her chest tones from about E
flat downwards. And what about the attack
of "Va! Laisse couler mes larmes"?
For a soprano this E is in a comfortable
middle-lower position below the break,
while for a mezzo it is right in the
break and the relative effort of producing
the note is surely an integral part
of Massenet’s conception. De los Angeles’s
lovely stream of sound just doesn’t
sound like a woman on the verge of breaking
down. While one would not wish to go
to the other extreme and impose a Slavonic
belter such as Obraztsova on this delicate
French score (if you do wish
for such a thing, Obraztsova recorded
it in 1979 with Domingo as Werther and
Chailly conducting), a number of genuine
mezzos have since essayed the part on
disc. All the same, there are lovely
things here.
With Mesplé
and Soyer as well as the smaller parts
we find the French tradition still very
much alive and I have nothing but praise
here.
Since Werther is now
more or less a repertoire piece, it
has to be remembered that those early
reviewers of the present set were determined
not to show their disappointment too
much since this was the first recording
since 1931 apart from a Nixa-Urania
issue of 1954 which Blyth dismissed
as "a poor successor". For
the record, and ignoring various live
issues, I have actually traced three
studio recordings made between 1931
and 1969: by Noré and Juyol under
Gressier (1948), by Richard and Juyol
under Sebastian (1952 – the Urania-Nixa
version referred to above) and by Albert
Lance and Rita Gorr under Etcheverry
(1964), as well as some extracts with
Cesare Valletti and Rosalind Elias under
René Leibowitz (1962). Incredibly,
all this material seems to exist on
CD today, though you may have a job
hunting it down. The classic 1931 recording,
with Georges Thill and Ninon Vallin
under Elie Cohen, is available from
Naxos.
The present recording,
then, did its part in re-establishing
Werther in the repertoire, but since
1969 we’ve had, apart from the Domingo/Obraztsova/Chailly
(1979), Alfredo Kraus and Tatiana Troyanos
under Plasson (1979), Carreras and von
Stade under Colin Davis (1980), Hadley
and von Otter under Nagano (1995), Alagna
and Gheorghiu under Pappano (1999),
Vargas and Kasarova under Jurowski (2001)
and, very cheaply from Naxos, Haddock
and Uria-Monzon (whose Carmen much impressed
me) under Casadesus. So all in all this
issue, which is hardly one of the "Great
Recordings of the Century", will
be prized by admirers of the two principals
(aren’t we all?), while for Massenet
himself most will wish to choose among
the above, not forgetting to supplement
their choice with the 1931 version.
Christopher Howell
EMI
Great Recordings of the Century
Orchestre de Paris/Georges Prêtre 