Umberto GIORDANO
(1867 – 1948) Andrea Chenier:
"Sì, fu soldato";
Pietro MASCAGNI
(1863 – 1945) Cavalleria
rusticana: "Mamma, quell vino è
generoso;
George Frederic
HANDEL (1685 – 1759) Serse:
"Frondi tenere ... Ombra mai fu;
Ruggiero LEONCAVALLO
(1858 – 1919) Pagliacci:
No! Pagliaccio non son!;
Teodoro COTTRAU
(1827 – 1879) Santa Lucia;
Gaetano DONIZETTI
(1797 – 1848) L’elisir d’amore:
"Una furtive lagrima";
Giacomo PUCCINI
(1858 – 1924) Tosca: "È
lucevan le stele";
Giuseppe VERDI
(1813 – 1901) Rigoletto:
"La donna è mobile";
Eduardo DI
CAPUA (1864 – 1917) O sole
mio;
Ernesto DE
CURTIS (1860 – 1926) Addio
bel sogno;
Cesare A BIXIO
(20th Cent) Solo
per te Lucia;
Ernesto DE
CURTIS: Senza nisciuno
Ruggiero LEONCAVALLO:
Pagliacci: "Pagliaccio, mio
marito ... O Colombina" (w Iva
Pacetti)
Georges BIZET
(1838 – 1875) Carmen: "La
fleur que tu m’avais jetée;
Ruggiero LEONCAVALLO:
Mattinata;
Ernesto DE
CURTIS: Torna a Surriento;
Johann Paul
Aegidius MARTINI (1741 – 1816)
Plaisir d’amour;
Christoph Willibald
GLUCK (1867 – 1948) Paride
ed Elena: "O del mio dolce ardor";
Jules MASSENET
(1842 – 1912) Élégie;
Franz SCHUBERT
(1797 – 1828) (arr.
Alois MELICHAR) Mille cherubini
in coro (Wiegenlied, D.498);
Ernesto DE
CURTIS: Non ti scordar di
me;
Alois MELICHAR
(1896 – 1976) Serenata Veneziana
Few great singers have
divided opinion as much as Beniamino
Gigli (1890 – 1957). Detractors have
continuously stressed his sometimes
lachrymose singing with gulps and sobs.
They have regretted his frequent use
of the intrusive "h" as a
means of singing runs and melismas -
when you have to sing more than one
note on the same syllable, i e the same
vowel, it should be for example "ca-a-ra"
while Gigli sings "ca-ha-ra".
They have said that he lacks taste.
It is easy to hear this and agree but,
as Alan Blyth says in his, as usual,
very perceptive appreciation in the
booklet: "these were part and parcel
of the Gigli persona, and without them
he would not have been the same singer".
The Gigli admirers, among whom I count
myself, point to the beauty of the voice,
the exquisite half-voice, the enthralling
diminuendos and pianissimos, his seamless
legato (when not inserting those "h"s),
his gleaming high notes and his identification
with the parts he sang.
This disc, the eighth
in the ongoing complete edition, gives
excellent examples of both the pros
and cons; but of course it’s the pros
that dominate. Otherwise he would never
have reached the legendary status he
did. When he recorded these arias and
songs he was between 43 and 45 years
old. This was the stage in his long
career when the freshness of voice and
the deepened maturity were at their
best equilibrium. He continued to sing
well for years to come, as witnessed
by the many complete opera recordings
he made during the late thirties and
early forties. Listening to his Radames
in the complete Aida from 1946
one notices a slight hardening of the
voice, but only slight.
Several of the arias
on the present disc have a special place
in my heart. Very early in my record
collecting career I bought an LP entitled
"The Best of Gigli". This
was the first real contact with the
standard tenor repertoire and I played
it over and over till I knew the arias
in detail. Later, when I got alternative
recordings, I found that there were
other tenors singing just as well, Björling
for example. But when I hear these arias
mentally, it is still with Gigli’s voice,
which means that the sobs and intrusive
"h"s are also stored in my
musical memory. Hearing these tracks
again only confirmed what I had always
known: that these are superlative performances.
When I started listening
to this disc, it wasn’t Gigli’s voice
that immediately made me sit up in my
chair; it was the orchestra, or rather
the recording of it. If I hadn’t known
that these were 78s from the mid-thirties,
I would have thought they were made
20 years later. I have recently reviewed
a couple of vocal discs recorded at
about that time and they were in fact
vastly inferior to this one. The answer
to this riddle is of course: Mark Obert-Thorn.
What he and Ward Marston have been doing
to restore invaluable recordings from
a distant past and make them attractive
to a wide audience represents one of
the most important achievements in the
recording industry during the last few
years.
And when Gigli appeared
he was right there in my living room,
so lifelike that I would have gone straight
up to him and shake hands, had it not
been for his magnificent singing, which
I would not want to interrupt. This
is an ideal track to play to any Gigli-detractor.
Here, in one of his two favourite parts,
Andrea Chenier (the other being Faust
in Boito’s Mefistofeles), he displays
a perfect lirico-spinto voice, free
from sobs and gulps, powerful, intense,
with ringing high notes. Masterly! And
that goes for the rest of the opera
arias on the disc ... well almost. In
the Cavalleria excerpt we hear
that famous honeyed mezza voce, but
it also brings out the sentimentality
and a fair share of sobs. As soon as
the intensity increases he is again
impressive. The Serse aria, historical
aspects apart, is exquisitely sung with
long legato phrases and perfect breath
control. The reproduction of the Kingsway
Hall organ is also impressive.
Gigli is again dramatically
impressive and deeply moving in the
last act aria from Pagliacci,
maybe less so in Arlecchino’s serenade.
In the first stanza he still sounds
like Canio but in the second he finds
his most caressing half-voice.
Nemorino’s "Una
furtiva lagrima" from L’elisir
d’amore is another track I would
choose to demonstrate the Gigli phenomenon
to a beginner. Everything is there:
the honeyed tone, the long unbroken
lines, the delicious pianissimos, the
radiant top notes – and also, to a certain
extent, the "h"s and the sobs.
The Tosca and
Rigoletto arias are classic renderings
and were best-sellers for many years
when records were kept in the catalogues.
Alan Blyth says that "Cavaradossi’s
lament might have been written with
Gigli in mind", and I agree. Has
it ever been better sung? There is not
a scrap of sentimentality – until the
very last line, where the text comes
out as "tanto (sob) la vita".
But I also think that The Duke of Mantua
is tailor-made for Gigli, and it is
a pity that he was never allowed a complete
recording. He evidently enjoys himself
greatly, colours his voice seductively,
has an exquisite trill and an impressively
shining final note.
I could go on for ever,
discussing track after track, but let
me just point to a couple of not so
positive features and then round off
the review with a few general remarks.
The Flower Song from
Carmen was among the 12 tracks
on my old LP, and for some years I thought
it should be sung like that. Then I
heard Leopold Simoneau, Jussi Björling
and Nicolai Gedda. They showed, in their
different ways, that Gigli gives a very
approximate portrait of Don José.
He sings in Italian, which is bad enough,
but it is also quite insensitively done
and the voice is curiously and uncharacteristically
pinched. On the other hand he sings
a marvellous Gluck aria, that leaves
the listener breathless.
A considerable part
of the disc is occupied by popular songs,
mostly from the Neapolitan genre, one
that most tenors from Caruso onwards
have found delight in; Gigli was no
exception. He loved this repertoire
and when I look through my notes I read
comments like "soft and beautiful",
"real fire", "the gold
just flows from his throat", "extraordinarily
inspired", "inimitable",
"exquisite", "can they
be better sung?". Besides these
Neapolitan songs there are a few of
other origin, one being the Massenet
"Elegie" (labelled "exquisite"
on my note pad), another being the well-known
"Plaisir d’amour", sung in
French and I read "sung with restraint,
without fuss, elegantly and sincerely".
The one piece that
should be avoided is the Schubert "Cradle
song". First of all only the second
half of it is Schubert; the first obviously
being composed by the conductor of the
recording, Alois Melichar, who has equal
billing with Schubert on the label;
secondly this recording must be a find
for the Gigli detractors, since it could
be heard as an encyclopedia of all the
vices to be found in his singing: the
sobs, the gulps, the "h"s,
the sentimentality and a scooping and
distorting of the melodic line that
makes you seasick.
But this is an exception
to prove the rule and the rule says
that among the Three Great Tenors, and
there are no prizes for guessing who
the other two are, Gigli is at least
on a par with the others and in some
respects their superior.
Readers who have been
collecting this series should add this
one to their collection. Readers who
have not been collecting this
series should add this one to their
collection – the only risk being that
they will probably have to buy the preceding
seven volumes as well.
Göran Forsling
Beniamino Gigli (tenor), Iva Pacetti (soprano),
La Scala Orchestra/Carlo Sabajno, Franco Ghione,
Dino Oliveri, Orchestra/John Barbirolli, Berlin
State Opera Orchestra/Alois Melichar 
