In my review
of Warner-Fonit Cetra’s single-disc
"La Cenerentola" I protested
that a performance so drastically cut
should be announced on the cover as
"abridged", "highlights"
or something of the kind. Of course,
we all know that operas are usually
given in the theatre with the odd cut
here and there and it would be rampant
purism to suggest that a recording of
"La Traviata" should have
"abridged" written all over
it just because Alfredo’s cabaletta
is missing, but what are we to think
of this?
|
Zazà
|
Act I
|
Act II
|
Act III
|
Act IV
|
Total
|
|
Silipigni
|
23:54
|
15:07
|
22:23
|
19:25
|
86:53
|
|
Gavazzeni
(1995)
|
41:45
|
33:50
|
27:10
|
26:15
|
129:00
|
Since Gavazzeni’s tempi
are almost always more urgent than Silipigni’s,
the amount of music cut is actually
greater still than the 42-minute difference
which shows above. Unfortunately, the
Gavazzeni is not available on CD. It
was broadcast live from a performance
in Palermo and I have been able to hear
an off-the-air tape. Well, actually
an organization called House of Opera
is offering both this and a 2000 Nice
performance if you want to track it
down via the Internet, but I have no
idea of the quality, let alone the legality
since even Italy’s relatively easy-going
legislation requires twenty years to
pass before such a tape can be issued.
Playing the two section
by section is a revelatory experience.
Not only have entire arias been jettisoned
(some very attractive ones, too), but
the much of the through-composed narrative
writing has been lopped and pruned,
sometimes by just a few lines here and
there, sometimes savagely. But it is
at this point that I begin to wonder
if something more than cutting is afoot,
since, in order to make the bits that
are left hook up smoothly, some ingenious
re-writing (of both the music and the
words) has been undertaken. Moreover,
some of the music is completely different;
Act IV begins with a different prelude
and the concluding bars are different.
The off-stage chorus has been eliminated
from Act III, but the first of its appearances
has been replaced with a completely
new passage for orchestra alone. It
seems to me strange that such wholesale
re-composition should have been made
for a recording and I wonder if "Zazà"
actually exists in two versions, the
composer having been induced to tighten
it up drastically. Support for this
seems to come from the description of
the Bongiovanni version under Silvano
Frontalini (GB 2289/90-2), which I haven’t
had the opportunity to hear and which
lasts 148 minutes, as the "original
and unedited" version. So, by implication,
a "non-original and edited (by
who?)" version exists. I presume
that Gavazzeni plays the "original
and unedited" version with a few
minor cuts.
Does it matter? Well,
the score we hear under Gavazzeni seems
so much richer and so much fuller of
life. It is true that the edited version
gives greater linearity to an opera
which was criticised on its first appearance
for an excess of characters and minor
episodes. But it seems to me that the
poignancy of the third and fourth acts,
where Zazà’s own drama gradually
emerges from the sleazy life of the
music hall to which she is condemned
to return at the end, is all the greater
for the more detailed picture we have
of the world in which she moves. Part
of this may also be due to the fact
that Gavazzeni, then 86, finds so much
more vitality and theatrical narration
in it all than does Alfredo Silipigni’s
competent but somewhat sluggish baton.
Sometimes these old
Cetra recordings claim our attention
by reminding us of singers who were
widely admired in their day, and the
booklet turns the set into a special
memorial for the tenor Giuseppe Campora,
who died on 4th December
2004 while the reissue was being planned.
The name of Clara Petrella will also
attract the attention of opera enthusiasts.
Alas for the golden-agers, on this occasion
they are comfortably surpassed in the
1995 performance. Petrella sings very
solidly, to be sure, while Denia Gavazzeni
Mazzola is a more reckless artist; but
Petrella seems to be singing on a syllable-by-syllable
basis while Mazzola lives the part and
phrases the music. It all has so much
more meaning. It is fashionable to seize
on a second-string tenor of the past
and say "if only today’s tenors
were even as good as this", but
Gavazzeni’s Luca Canonici has a generally
easier emission than Campora and again,
whether inspired by Gavazzeni or simply
by the experience of performing the
role in the theatre, he gives more meaning
to the music. I could find Tito Turtura’s
Cascart fractionally superior in vocal
quality to Gavazzeni’s Stefano Antonucci.
The other roles are decently done in
either performance.
I have dwelt at length
on a comparison you won’t be able to
hear because I feel that in the last
resort the version under review just
doesn’t give a complete enough idea
of the opera to be worth buying. I am
sorry not to be able to give any advice
over the Bongiovanni recording, but
I feel that the Gavazzeni is a historical
document, lead by a conductor who was
a doughty champion of Italian verismo
over half a century or more, and since
the RAI presumably holds excellent master
tapes of it, ways should be found of
issuing it officially. The Cetra recording,
by the way, is pretty lack-lustre for
its date though the voices are well
enough caught. Last but not least, the
set offers pretty meagre timings and
the previous CD issue of this recording,
on Nuova Era, coupled it with Mascagni’s
one-act opera "Zanetto", the
40-odd minutes of which will presumably
be issued in due course by Warner Fonit
as a third meanly-filled CD.
As for the opera, the
story by Berton and Simon on which it
is based was found interesting enough
to have inspired a film version by George
Cukor (1939, with Claudette Colbert)
as well as a more recent Italian remake
with music by Nino Rota. Leoncavallo’s
music goes to reinforce my conviction,
based on several recent Mascagni reissues,
that the dominance of the Italian opera
scene by Puccini was less than fair.
The scene where Zazà meets her
lover’s daughter is both curious, since
the child has a speaking part in stark
contrast to the soprano’s passionately
operatic outpourings, and genuinely
powerful. Perhaps it was above all for
this that Geraldine Farrar chose "Zazà"
for her farewell appearance in 1922.
Christopher Howell
Orchestra Sinfonica di Torino della RAI/Alfredo
Silipigni 
