Not so long ago I was reviewing
a selection of 18 Verdi songs sung by
the rising young soprano Norah Amsellen,
and complained that she brought the
entire box of operatic tricks to bear
on music which really called for a Bellinian
purity of line. The latest in Naxos’s
ongoing exploration of the deleted Collins
catalogue brings 16 of the songs (13
are common to the two discs) recorded
eight years ago by a British artist
who has made the Italian style his speciality.
O’Neill certainly sounds like a typical
Italian baritonal tenor (put simply
"baritonal" means more like
Domingo than like Pavarotti), with a
supple, even emission rising to a heroic
top C. I thought his Italian pretty
authentic and tried him "blind"
on my Italian wife, who didn’t even
realize she was not listening to a native
singer.
As well as making the
right sound, he also adopts very much
the right style, phrasing warmly but
simply and above all musically. In other
words, he seems to agree that these
songs are to be sung with a Bellinian
purity of line.
However, little in
this world is perfect and I have a few
queries to make. First of all, I don’t
think he should have sung "Stornello"
at all. In lieder, mélodie and
the like I am prepared much of the time
to suspend disbelief and listen to women
singing men’s songs and vice versa.
But in this case, in spite of his adroitly
adjusting the pronouns and adjectives
so the text seems to be a masculine
one, in reality the situation doesn’t
transpose that easily. The joke about
the original situation is that this
pert little girl, emancipated before
her time, is protesting against male
infidelity and saying that now she’s
going to do her own thing (the text
covers similar ground to Shakespeare’s
"Sigh no more ladies"). In
Verdi’s Italy, and in much of rural
southern Italy even today, her going
against conventions was both hilarious
and outrageous. Transpose it to a man
and you just get male-chauvinist piggery
of a kind that hasn’t died out yet,
and the man sounds a beastly cad.
I also don’t think
he should have sung "Lo spazzacammino".
Yes, I know chimney-sweeps are invariably
male - certainly in Verdi’s day they
were - but they were also usually very
young boys and it is clear Verdi was
writing for the sort of light, bright,
high soprano who would sing Oscar in
"Un Ballo in Maschera". For
one thing, that sort of soprano could
manage the trills on the high As whereas
O’Neill can only offer a slow-motion
waver; Amsellen, a lyric soprano, couldn’t
bring this one off either. Frankly,
he sounds like a fish out of water in
this piece.
Thirdly, on a disc
not exceptionally full, it was a pity
to include both versions of the "Brindisi"
rather than something else, when the
differences amount to so little. Furthermore,
O’Neill’s generally faithful observance
of Verdi’s markings goes awry here.
This piece (in both versions) is larded
with little accents on the off-beats
and on the wrong part of the
word. O’Neill "corrects" the
accents so the words come out with their
natural stress. The singer who does
what Verdi asks for will sound so rolling
drunk (it’s a hymn in praise of wine,
of course) that you wonder if he’ll
get to the end. O’Neill sounds like
a sober chap singing a pretty tune.
I also have a query
about "L’esule". After so
much respectful adherence to Verdi’s
markings, he makes several changes to
the line here, ending on an unscripted
top C. Is there an alternative edition
to the Ricordi volume I have (or manuscript
variants?), or could O’Neill just not
resist the temptation to prove, after
so much tenorial good behaviour, that
a tenor is after all, as Hans von Bülow
put it, "not a voice but a disease"?
Since the record has notes by the distinguished
Verdi scholar Julian Budden, it is perfectly
possible that he drew O’Neill’s attention
to some variants, but his notes make
no mention of this.
For the rest, it is
all as admirable as I described it at
the beginning. Only a sneaking suspicion
came into my mind that it might be a
little too well-mannered and
that maybe Amsellen’s "bad behaviour"
had a point after all. What it amounts
to is a matter of vocal personality
and surely vocal personality and vocal
good manners don’t have to be mutually
exclusive? It may well be that the LP
recorded for RCA many moons ago by the
young Margaret Price has the best of
both worlds, but alas I have never heard
it. Of the two discs under discussion
O’Neill’s, which is very well recorded,
can certainly be recommended in spite
of the above reservations; Amsellen’s
can be recommended only to those who
believe that Verdi was such a rotten
composer that no amount of vocal hamming
can be too bad for him.
Christopher Howell
see also
review by Jonathan Rohr
Dennis O’Neill (tenor), Ingrid Surgenor (piano)
