Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901)
Nabucco (1842)
Matteo Manuguerra (baritone) - Nabucco
Veriano Luchetti (tenor) - Ismaele
Nicolai Ghiaurov (bass) - Zaccaria
Renata Scotto (soprano) - Abegaille
Elena Obraztsova (mezzo) - Fenena
Robert Lloyd (bass) - High Priest of Baal
Kenneth Collins (tenor) - Abdallo
Anne Edwards (soprano) - Anna.
Ambrosian Opera Chorus; Philharmonia Orchestra/Riccardo Muti
rec. Kingsway Hall, London, 10-20 July 1977 and 5-8 February 1978
EMI CLASSICS 4564472 [58:16 + 65:08]
“Con quest’opera si può dire veramente che ebbe principio
la mia carriera artistica.” (“It can truly be said that my artistic
career began with this opera”). Verdi may perhaps be forgiven for taking
artistic licence with this observation to Ricordi, his publisher. His previous
works were the patchy and immature “Oberto” and the comic flop
“Un giorno do regno”. “Nabucco” marks a huge advance
over these. Verdi here begins to find his true voice, mining the rich seam
of cantilena melody which characterises his best early work and adding to
it both psychological profundity and economy of expression.
Re-visiting this recording and comparing it with those by Sinopoli and Gardelli,
I was struck by the tautness and impact of the libretto and plot. All three
recordings have their flaws but all three are to a large degree successful
and I found that I had been wrong to relegate this one to third place. Verdi
was as incapable as Shakespeare of creating cardboard characters and it is
remarkable how both the villains of the piece, Abegaille and Nabucco himself,
emerge as complex, tormented souls, far more absorbing than the supposed heroes.
They are the forerunners of that long line of father-daughter pairs; Solera’s
libretto stimulated Verdi’s imagination and his emotions at a time when
he was trying to emerge from two years of grief and suffering, marked by personal
loss and (comparative) artistic failure.
The popularity of “Va, pensiero”, the emphasis upon spectacle,
the four marches, unison choruses and brassy scoring all combine to support
the reputation of “Nabucco” as the chauvinistic rallying-call
of popular legend. However, in the admixture of private passion and political
chicanery, certain situations and even specific musical ideas are clearly
proleptic of later, greater works such as “Simon Boccanegra”,
although the masterpiece it most resembles in mood, atmosphere and in its
melding of extremes is perhaps “Aida”. Certainly his contemporaries
thought well enough of it to choose its music to accompany Verdi’s funeral
cortège.
Muti’s conducting of this 1977 recording has been condemned as crude
and aggressive. He is hectic at times, to be sure, but that is hardly out
of keeping with the swift pace of events and he still gives his singers space
in the more contemplative passages. By comparison, the more experienced Gardelli
lets the action unfold in more relaxed style and has a more persuasive overview
of the score. Sinopoli is simply erratic, with too much of a stop-go approach,
dissecting every bar and letting tensions droop before trying to whip up passion
out of nowhere. Nonetheless, I prefer Sinopoli’s brisker, shapelier
account of “Va, pensiero” to Muti’s uncharacteristically
lugubrious version; Gardelli’s lies in between, as you might expect.
The eponymous starring role is in all three cases taken by a first class baritone.
Manuguerra has the smoothest, most sheerly beautiful voice, with more sap
in its upper reaches than the aging Gobbi and more bite than Cappuccilli’s
woolly tone, but all three bring admirable virtues to the part: Gobbi is the
most moving and characterful, Cappuccilli displays his celebrated long-breathed
line in “Deh, perdona”, while the underrated Manuguerra combines
some of the best features of both the others in a detailed, compellingly vocalised
account.
As Abegaille, all three spinto sopranos - as Scotto had become by this stage
of her career - provide the listener with thrills and vocal virtuosity. Dimitrova
has a rather thin, wiry tone and the steam-whistle top notes, so typical of
a certain type of Slavic soprano, tend to flutter, but she has the range and
measure of this fiendish part. I sometimes think its worth owning Sinopoli’s
recording just to hear her wonderful pianissimo top C alone. She has no especial
psychological insights and her registers are disconnected, but it’s
still a worthy assumption. Suliotis excels in a rôle tailor-made for
a fearless, uninhibited twenty-two-year-old of formidable gifts and talent.
She, too, suffers from poor integration of the two registers but capitalises
on the contrast between her floated top and trenchant low notes. She is the
artist who most recalls the formidable performance of Callas in her 1958 recital
conducted by Rescigno. Scotto, too, shares features of Callas’s delivery,
including a biting articulation of text and the less recommendable lapses
into flapping top notes when pressed at forte. When not pressing too hard,
Scotto can still float the top and hers is a formidable firebrand of an Abegaille
- she is the best actress of all. Given the intensity and conviction of Scotto’s
performance, I find that I am now much more forgiving of those squally high
notes and inclined to prefer her to Dimitrova, who is technically superior
but more generic in characterisation.
All three basses are fine artists: Nesterenko for Sinopoli has a mighty voice
but lacks the warmth and authority of Ghiaurov - who is rusty and occasionally
bleak of tone at this stage in his career but still impressive - or Carlo
Cava, who has less voice than either but has thought more deeply about the
inflection of words and nuances of character. All three make a beautiful job
of their aria “Tu sul labbro”, with its beguiling six-part cello
accompaniment. Robert Lloyd is a notable High Priest for Muti; I wonder if
I am the first to notice that he must have been absent for whatever reason
(not worth paying him to sing so little?) during the second, 1978, recording
session and thus we hear the unmistakable voice of Ghiaurov, deputising for
Lloyd in the High Priest’s one line in the finale.
In sheer vocal terms, Muti scores over Gardelli with Elena Obraztsova’s
Fenena. Decca made the mistake of simply under-casting Fenena with the inadequate
Dora Carral, but the problem with Obraztsova is that she has far too much
voice for so passive a character. Her stentorian tones are not a good fit
for the delicate Fenena, although she vocalises better than either Carral
or the late Valentini-Terrani, making a particularly fine job of her prayer
in the last act.
One of the great pleasures of the Muti set is to hear Veriano Luchetti in
the brief and rather ungrateful role of Ismaele. His smooth, ringing, Italianate
tenor is far preferable to the clumsy Prevedi for Gardelli and superior even
to Domingo, slumming it in a bit part for Sinopoli. Luchetti is particularly
admirable in the lovely trio “Io t’amava”.
The Ambrosian Chorus sounds a little lean in comparison with the Vienna State
Opera Chorus or the Berliners but as ever they sing with verve and precision.
The Philharmonia respond with alacrity to Muti’s taut direction and
the sound is excellent.
I remain irritated by EMI’s inconvenient policy of putting the libretto
on a third CD-ROM; I do not want to go to the trouble or expense of printing
off my own and thus simply take a libretto from another set on my shelves
- but not everyone has multiple editions of the less popular Verdi operas.
One minor point: in this re-packaging (not a re-mastering, I think; this dates
from 1986 but remains satisfactory), in the cast-list someone has managed
to transpose the surnames of that estimable tenor Keith Collins and soprano
Anne Edwards.
Ralph Moore