This collection of three live performances of Verdi operas has
a feature that may not have been intended. They represent distinct
periods in the great Italian composer’s oeuvre. Ernani,
Verdi’s fifth opera, is very much in the style that has
come to be known as Early Verdi where the music has thrust
and vitality without necessarily conveying the emotions of the
words. These works often have a patriotic basis. Luisa Miller
verges on the composer’s great Middle Period noted
for the great trio of operas Rigoletto, Il Trovatore
and La Traviata, all staged between 1851 and 1853. In
itself, Luisa Miller can be considered transitional between
the two periods mentioned. Notably, the work’s subject
matter concerns personal relationships and particularly that
between father and daughter. The final act is also more musically
sophisticated than the other two that are more in the composer’s
earlier style complete with stirring choruses and aria and duets
with cabalettas. The third work, La forza del destino,
is very much of Verdi’s compositional maturity with characters
closely delineated in the music and with a dramatic tautness
that belies the complex, even rambling, story.
Ernani - Lyric dramain four parts (1844)
Ernani, the bandit - Marco Berti (tenor); Don Carlo, King of
Spain - Carlo Guelfi (baritone); Don Ruy de Silva, a Spanish
grandee - Giacomo Prestia (bass); Elvira, Silva’s niece
and loved by Ernani - Susan Neves (soprano); Don Riccardo, the
King’s equerry - Samuele Simoncini (tenor); Jago, equerry
to Silva - Alessandro Svab (bass)
Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro Reggio, Parma, Italy/Antonello
Allemandi
Performed in the Critical Edition by Claudio Gallico
rec. live, Teatro Reggio, May 2005, annual Verdi Festival
Notes and Synopsis in English, German, French, Spanish
Libretto in Italian and English
Previously released as CDS496/1-2
Based on Victor Hugo’s play Hernani Verdi’s
opera Ernani was first performed at the Teatro la Fenice,
Venice, on 9 March 1844. In the Verdi oeuvre it follows directly
after Nabucco and I Lombardi premiered at La Scala
in March 1842 and February 1843 respectively. These works had
been resounding successes and placed the thirty-year-old Verdi
alongside his older compatriot, Donizetti, at the forefront
of Italian opera composers.
The prospect of a success in Venice was an attraction for Verdi
and the composer, aware of his increasing value, drove a hard
bargain by which La Fenice would stage I Lombardi as
well as presenting the new opera to a libretto of Verdi’s
own choice. To write the verses he chose Piave, a native of
Venice, and who was to become his collaborator in many subsequent
works. Written in the traditional form of arias, cabalettas
and group scenes, together with virile choral contributions,
the elements combine to make the work attractive for audiences.
I have never had a bad night at the theatre with this opera.
Nonetheless, Ernani was not a resounding success at the
premiere, probably due to the limitations of some soloists.
However, for later performances at La Scala Verdi wrote additional
music for the role of Silva, to accommodate the distinguished
bass of the time, along with an added cabaletta in act one.
These additions and a stronger cast brought the success the
composer hoped for.
In my earlier review
of this performance, and the associated DVD (see review)
I found Marco Berti to have a somewhat tight tone and none too
steady either. However, he does improve and his efforts at more
graceful phrasing are noted. Overall I continue to be disappointed
with Carlo Guelfi as Don Carlo, King of Spain, and rival suitor
for Elvira’s hand. He has a strong tone but often sounds
strained and unfocused in a role that requires legato and strong
middle-voiced enunciation. On DVD his strong tone and acting
enables dramatic situations to come over better as when Carlo
first threatens dire consequences for the plotters and more
so after his elevation to the crown of Charlemagne.
As Don Ruy de Silva, Giacomo Prestia has a rather gruff tone
with a tight focus and a small tonal palette of colour. He expresses
his words and tries to create a character within these limitations.
The best singing comes from Susan Neves’ Elvira, the woman
pursued by all three male protagonists. Her vocalism is the
most committed among the soloists with good variety of tonal
colour and characterisation. Her introductory Sorte la notte
(CD 1 Tr. 5) to her Ernani involami and Tutto sprezzo
(CD 1 trs. 6-7) is a little tentative, but once into her stride
her full voice, with a good range of tonal colour and variety
of modulation, is a great strength. Her poor acting is not a
distraction on the CD whilst in both versions she also copes
much better than her colleagues with the conducting of Antonello
Allemandi who, in his eagerness to support his singers by allowing
time for them to phrase, often puts them under pressure in holding
the vocal line. In the trios of act one he ups the pace and
the Verdian thrill factor kicks in. He is similarly vibrant
in his conducting of the choral contributions portraying Ernani’s
bandits. These passages are viscerally thrilling as early Verdi
scenes of this nature should be, particularly with this idiomatic
Italian chorus in full and virile voice.
Luisa Miller - Tragic melodrama in three acts (1849)
Count Walter, local landowner - Alexander Vonogradov (bass);
Rodolfo, Count Walter’s son - Giuseppe Sabbatini (tenor);
Frederica, Duchess of Ostheim and Walter’s niece - Ursula
Ferri (mezzo); Wurm, Walter’s steward - Arutjun Kotchinian
(bass); Miller, a retired soldier - Damiano Salerno (baritone);
Luisa, Miller’s daughter - Darina Takova (soprano)
Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro La Fenice, Venice, Italy/Maurizo
Benini
Notes and Synopsis in English, German, French, Spanish
Libretto in Italian and English
rec. live, May 2006
Previously released as CDS523/1-2
Luisa Miller came at the end of what Verdi referred to
as his anni de galera or years in the galleys. It was
a period when he was always racing against time. Whilst composing
one opera, he was planning the subjects of others and supervising,
often in minute detail, the writing of the librettos of another
one or two. Added to those pressures were negotiations with
impresarios and publishers for operas to follow. In Part
2 of my Verdi conspectus I detail the background, and various
recorded performances, of the ten operas that he composed in
the hectic five years between I due Foscari (1844) and
Luisa Miller (1849).
In 1847 Verdi signed a contract to compose an opera for Naples.
He then spent the next two years trying, on one pretext or another,
to withdraw from it. Verdi stipulated that the new work should
be a brief drama of interest, action and above all feeling.
Cammarano, his chosen librettist, suggested Schiller’s
Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love). Given the nature
of the Naples censors Cammarano, a native of the city, took
care to eliminate the political and social overtones of Schiller’s
play with its story of innocence destroyed by corruption and
the machinations of those in power. Schiller’s play became
Luisa Miller, Verdi’s 15th opera. Whilst
Verdi might originally have wanted something spectacular for
the San Carlo, what he and Cammarano actually hatched was an
intense personal drama and with the lyrical elements achieved
by the avoidance of excessive use of brass and timpani.
In parts of La battaglia di Legnano,Verdi’s
previous opera, the composer had learned how to express intimate
emotions. In Luisa Miller he takes this skill a quantum
leap forward. The plaintive woodwind tones give character to
the more intimate pastoral nature of the early scenes in particular.
The individual characters are filled out musically and encompass
the varying emotions they have to convey and which differ significantly
in the three acts. It is in the music of the last act, and particularly
the duets between father and daughter, where scholars and musicologists
suggest that Verdi really breaks new ground and shows himself
compositionally ready for the subjects of the great operas that
were shortly to flow from his pen.
The best news about this performance comes with conductor Maurizio
Benini’s handling of the score. His dynamics in the opening
overture sets a storm of the passions to follow. The worst news
is the Miller of Damiano Salerno who starts off with a distinct
wobble and whilst this steadies his rather dry monochromic tone
fails to improve. It militates against Verdi’s writing
that has so much paternal concern and passion. As his son, Giuseppe
Sabbatini is often vocally strained beyond his dramatic compass,
having to thicken his tone and which becomes somewhat throaty
and nasal. We are used to hearing him in lighter roles and he
fails to make the step up to the lover Rodolfo with his Quando
le sere in Placido. It’s lacking in much vocal grace
(CD 2 Tr.7). The dark-toned Wurm of Arutjun Kotchinian is nicely
contrasted with the fellow bass Alexander Vonogradov as Count
Walter, making their narrative duet (CD 2 Trs 1-2) of more interest
than usual. Despite the virtues of the two basses, it is the
women who really shine. In the tragic eponymous role, Darina
Takova sings with good expression and characterisation, her
vocal virtues encompassing the many emotions called for with
pleasing tone and range of expression. The voice that really
breathes quality is that of Ursula Ferri as the Duchess of Ostheim,
Walter’s niece and Rodolfo’s intended. I was sorry
that the role was not more extensive as her warm contraltoish
mezzo is a delight.
Despite my criticisms of some of the singing I enjoyed listening
to this live performance even if it does not match that on the
Arts label (see review)
with its star tenor soloist, also well conducted.
La forza del destino - Melodramma in four acts.
Revised 1869 version.
Marquis of Calatrava - Giuseppe Nicodemo (bass); Donna Leonora,
his daughter - Susanna Branchini (soprano); Curra, her chambermaid
- Silvia Balistreri (soprano); Don Alvaro, lover of Leonora
and of Royal Inca Indian descent - Renzo Zulian (tenor); Don
Carlo of Vargas, Leonora’s brother - Marco Di Felice (baritone);
Preziosilla, Tiziana Carraro (mezzo); Fra Melitone, Paolo Rumetz
(bass-baritone); Padre Guardiano - Paolo Battaglia (bass); Mastro
Trabuco, muleteer - Antonio Feltracco (tenor); Alcade, Luca
Dall’Amico (tenor); Spanish military surgeon - Romano
Franci (tenor)
Orchestra Filarmonica Veneta/Lukas Karytinos
rec. live, Teatro Communale di Modena, Italy, January 2006
Notes in Italian (original language), English, German, French
Libretto in Italian and English
Previously released as CDS512/1-3
After all the trouble with the censor in Naples during 1858
- where Un Ballo in Maschera should have been staged
before being premiered in Rome in February 1859 - Verdi announced
to a small circle of friends that he had given up composing
and intended to return to his farm and enjoy the fruits of his
labours in a more relaxed manner. However, Cavour, the father
of the fight for the unification of Italy, persuaded Verdi to
stand for Italy’s first National Parliament. He
did so and was elected and attended assiduously until Cavour’s
premature and untimely death when his interest declined. December
1860, whilst Verdi was away in Turin on parliamentary business,
Giuseppina received a letter from a friend in Russia. Also enclosed
was an invitation from the great Italian dramatic tenor Enrico
Tamberlick, who Verdi knew and admired. Acting on behalf of
the Imperial Theatre of St. Petersburg the letter invited
Verdi to write an opera for the following season. Despite the
likelihood of temperatures of 22 degrees below zero, the prospect
of a visit to Imperial Russia appealed to Giuseppina and she
promised to use all endeavours to try and persuade Verdi to
accept. Whether it was her skills of persuasion, the fact that
he was missing the theatre, or the conditions of the contract,
and the large fee that would help fund the major alterations
at his estate at Sant’Agata, Verdi agreed.
Verdi settled on the Spanish romantic drama Don Alvaro, o
La fuerza de sino by Angel Perez de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas
as a suitable subject for the new opera and asked Piave to provide
the libretto. It is sometimes said that the story is too rambling
and full of improbabilities. That may be so, but it certainly
inspired Verdi to compose some of his most wonderful melodies
and fully characterise the roles in his music. He lightened
the dark plot with its multiple deaths somewhat further than
the play using a scene from Schiller’s Wallenstein
Lager involving a panorama of life in a military encampment
including soldiers, vivandieres, gypsies and a monk who preaches
in the funniest and most delightful manner in the world.
The monk would become Melitone in the opera and is often seen
as a precursor to the comic role in his great final opera, Falstaff.
La forza del destino demands full-toned Verdi voices.
It is not a work suitable for light lyric voices. This is best
illustrated by the fact that when Verdi and his wife made the
long journey to St. Petersburg for the premiere in December
1861, and found the soprano contracted for the role of Leonora
to be ill, it was not possible to find a substitute singer from
the company roster. The whole production was postponed for one
year. When the opera was eventually premiered on 10 November
1862 it was a success with the Tsar attending, inviting the
Verdis to his box, and later investing him with the highest
state honours.
Not wholly happy about the ending of the opera with its depressing
multiple deaths in the final scene Verdi withheld the score
from theatres that he considered incapable of doing it justice.
After some minor tinkering he eventually got round to a revision
when Ricordi proposed performances at La Scala. It is in this
revised form, premiered at La Scala on 27 February 1869, that
the work is heard today and in this performance.
In my earlier review I was perhaps unduly harsh on Susanna Branchini,
suggesting she barely had the vocal heft for Mimi let alone
the spinto demands of Leonora. Even in the small-sized Teatro
Communale di Modena where this performance was recorded
she struggles to ride over the orchestra and convey the agonies
of the role. As her brother, the baritone Marco Di Felice, and
lover, the tenor Renzo Zulian, have some of the most dramatic
duets that Verdi ever wrote. Whilst the staging on the DVD helps
cover their vocal limitations their deficiencies are more evident
in sound alone. Neither is a singer of the top class, both being
strained at the top of the voice, but they manage to invest
the music with some frisson. Elsewhere the young bass Paolo
Battaglia as Padre Guardiano has moments when I think his voice
has promise with sap and bass resonance; at others his tone
is dry. Overall he is unable to find the required vocal gravitas.
As Fra Melitone, Paolo Rumetz portrays the part of the irascible
brother quite well albeit with some unsteadiness at the top.
Tiziana Carraro’s Preziosilla has no such trouble and
sings with vibrancy and character.
Robert J Farr
rec. 2005/6
