I had thought about starting this review with the well-known
introductory phrase “
Once upon a time ...” But,
second thoughts were that my worthy editor might just think I
had lost it altogether and despatch my efforts and me to the
trash skip! Further thought brought the reality that this 1966
recording could well be considered an early chapter in the human
fairy tale that launched the international career of one of the
greatest singers of the second half of the twentieth century.
It became the precursor, over the next twenty odd years, of twenty-eight
studio opera recordings for various major labels across the bel
canto, lyrico spinto and verismo genres, many recital discs and
innumerable pirate recordings, but that is to jump ahead.
The story starts somewhat like an opera, with a prologue some
years before the main action, and concerns how a twenty-four
year old guy called Allen Sven Oxenberg founded
The American
Opera Society with the intention of bringing, in concert,
rare repertoire to New York audiences. He provided his audiences
with the premieres of many works they had never heard before
such as
Medea,
Giovanni d’Arco,
Les Troyens and
even
Billy Budd. It was a time even before Callas had
got her teeth into the
bel canto repertoire and when she
later fell out with Bing, intendant of New York’s Metropolitan
Opera, she brought that genre to Oxenberg’s audience in
1958 with Bellini’s
Il Pirata for its American debut.
Overnight the AOS became New York’s principal purveyor
of star operatic attractions, even, in February 1962 upstaging
the Met with Sutherland’s debut in the city singing the
eponymous role in Bellini’s long forgotten
Beatrice
di Tenda. Sutherland was later joined by emerging American
mezzo Marilyn Horne, the two singing Rossini’s rarely heard
Semiramide for
the Society, after which Oxenberg sought a suitable role for
Horne alone. She was in something of a vocal identity crisis,
able to encompass much that was in the treble clef including
soprano roles as well as the coloratura mezzo repertoire. He
sought a suitable vehicle for her, the AOS and the ongoing
bel
canto revival. He settled on the soprano title role in Donizetti’s
Lucrezia
Borgia for performance on 20 April 1965 at Carnegie Hall.
With all tickets sold, and only weeks to go, Horne hit problems
with her advanced pregnancy and pulled out.
Oxenberg called in vain the only two divas known to be conversant
with the idiom, Sutherland and Gencer, both of whom were fully
committed. An agent, Bernard Delfont, suggested a Spanish soprano
who he had recently heard in
Figaro at Lausanne. Her name
was Montserrat Caballé. She had been singing professionally
for ten years and in diverse repertoire that even extended to
the likes of Strauss’s thickly orchestrated
Salome,
hardly
bel canto (see
review).
She was at home learning the Marschallin in
Der Rosenkavalier for
Glyndebourne. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and she
contacted a well-known conductor working in Barcelona who advised
she sing it like Fiordiligi in Mozart’s
Cosi fan Tutte.
Caballé’s biographers (Robert Pullen and Stephen
Taylor. Indigo 1996 pp,101
et seq) tell the raging success
of the soprano’s performance, and its aftermath, in New
York and around the operatic world in a chapter entitled
A
Trip to Stardom. Suffice to say Caballé went from
an unknown to the front page, as well as the arts pages, of the
next day’s New York papers. Bing asked her to name her
price and what she wished to sing for her debut in the Met. She
also later returned to the
American Opera Society in a
series of
bel canto sequels.
As well as opera houses, the recording company RCA came along
with a contract to record
Lucrezia Borgia the following
year during their annual recording sessions in Rome. The conductor
was to be Jonel Perlea the same as at the New York concert performance.
Alongside Caballé they cast the Canarian tenor Alfredo
Krauss, a
tenore di grazia of recognised vocal elegance,
particularly in the
bel canto repertoire. The cast also
comprised the young American mezzo Shirley Verrett and regulars
from the Met and Rome opera houses. The recording features as
one of esteemed Opera Magazine’s
Thirty all-time great
recordings (August 2002). I would not quite put it that high
if only for the reason that Caballé, in her recordings
of other works and recital discs from the
bel canto repertoire
surpasses her standards here. However, what is evident beyond
doubt is that the recording captures the soprano’s capacity
for vocal beauty, smooth legato and elegant phrasing as well
as exhibiting the sublime floated pianissimos for which she became
renowned, and more regrettably, the lack of a trill that she
never acquired. I also suspect that five years or so later, with
the likes of Norma and Elisabetta in
Roberto Devereux firmly
in her repertoire, she would have given her husband Alfonso a
harder time in the act two confrontation as she reminds him of
how many husbands she has already seen off (CD2 trs.3-5). Somewhat
different from the New York performance are the inclusions of
the cabaletta to Lucrezia’s
Com’e bello (CD
1 trs.5-6) and the concluding rondo finale that Donizetti reluctantly
wrote for the creator Méric-Lalande at her insistence
(Ashton.
Donizetti and his Operas. 1983 pp.348-357) as
Lucrezia herself dies at the sight of her dead son (CD 2 tr.18).
Krauss sings with his usual vocal elegance and somewhat reedy
tone bringing out the positive character of Gennaro in a manner
that reflected Donizetti’s writing. Previously, as Ashton
points out, the composer had more often than not failed in this
respect, leaving his romantic tenors rather flaccid. This is
certainly not the case here as heard in the trios of both acts
between Alfonso, Lucrezia and Gennaro ((CD 1 trs.8-10 and CD
2 trs.5-7). Shirley Verrett sings strongly and reliably as Orsini,
perhaps missing a little of the character’s vivacity in
her Brindisi (CD 2 tr.12). Ezio Flagello sings strongly, but
without much vocal individuality, as Alfonso. The unusual numbers,
and more extensive writing than normal for the comprimario roles,
are portrayed adequately if without particular distinction. Perlea
on the rostrum deserves more credit than he often gets on record.
The recording has come up well from what I remember of the LPs
and earlier CD versions. The sound is typical of the period with
the voices clear and well forward but some lack of atmosphere
and presence. The booklet has full cast-listing, a track-listing
and related synopsis, all in English, French and German.
The range of Caballé’s recorded repertoire, and
something of her background, can also be seen in my
review,
and that of a
colleague,
of collections from recital and opera recordings she made.
Robert J Farr