Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901)
Il Trovatore – opera in four acts (1853)
Maria Callas (soprano) - Leonora
Fedora Barbieri (mezzo-soprano) - Azucena
Giuseppe di Stefano (tenor) - Manrico
Rolando Panerai (baritone) – Il conte di Luna
Nicola Zaccaria (bass) - Ferrando
Luisa Villa (soprano) - Ines
Renato Ercolani (tenor) - Ruiz/Un messo
“Giulio Mauri” (bass) - Un vecchio zingaro
Libretto: Salvatore Cammarano after Antonio Garcia Gutierrez
Chorus and Orchestra of La Scala, Milan/Herbert von Karajan
rec. 3-9 July 1956, La Scala, Milan
PRISTINE AUDIO PACO181 [67:56 + 61:41]
I included this famous recording in my recent survey of the opera’s discography and reproduce below extracts from that review as obviously I will not have had any reason to change my views regarding its artistic merits. I concluded that previous assessment by declaring that “owing to its combination of energy, elegance and sheer glamour, it is still worthy of the highest recommendation” despite the fact that there are some cuts, some find Giuseppe Di Stefano to be occasionally over-parted as Manrico, and it was made in mono sound owing to what I rudely referred to as “Walter Legge's pig-headed resistance to new-fangled stereo”. So the big question here with regard to this latest issue from Pristine is whether their XR remastering from EMI’s original mono into Ambient Stereo has remedied and enhanced the listener’s appreciation of it, as might reasonably be expected, given their record of great success in revitalising vintage recordings.
First, here are my earlier observations regarding the performance:
“The pairing of Callas still in best voice and Karajan in an opera in which he always excelled, directing an orchestra entirely immersed in the Verdian performance tradition, will itself be enough to guarantee its place amongst the top versions. Despite his ego, Karajan was always very considerate to his singers and mindful of the subtleties beneath the ostensible crudities of Verdi's most blatant tub-thumper of an opera and Callas provides a riveting portrayal of the desperate Leonora, employing her heart-stopping portamenti, luxuriant lower register and special gift for word-painting to ensure that hers is one of the most penetrating depictions of a heroine who is given some of the most meltingly lovely cantilena passages in all of Verdi's output. The voice is almost wholly under control and any harshness or beat in its upper reaches is passing.
However, this recording possesses many other virtues, including the contribution of the ever-elegant Panerai. He is almost too elegant and beautiful in fact for the brutish di Luna. Other baritones are more imposing but none makes so much of colouring and shading his voice and he makes a virtue of his neater, smaller sound. The rich bass Zaccaria deals masterfully with Ferrando's frequent gruppetti and Barbieri is a thrilling, hysterical, big-voiced Azucena.
The singer who comes nearest to letting the side down is Di Stefano. He is sometimes rhythmically uncertain and the role is manifestly a size too big for him; at times, he certainly resorts to shouting, such as at the close of "Di quella pira". Yet he is impassioned and typically whole-hearted; this was a singer who didn't know how to sing on the interest of his voice and he is lavish in his squandering of its capital.”
Playing extracts from the EMI issue and this new remastering immediately, from the first drum-roll, reveals the improved immediacy, depth, breadth and brilliance, and reduced extraneous noise in the Pristine version. It is not by any means that the original mono sound is bad and I would not necessarily rush to replace it with this new one but it is equally obvious that for an audiophile or a new purchaser this is the superior option. I note especially that while listening to Callas’ already minutely inflected delivery of the text, the many little expressive subtleties she introduced are more vividly revealed. I also hear a new warmth in Di Stefano’s voice and find myself less inclined to nit-pick about a performance which remains a classic assumption of a famously demanding role.
I note, too, that I previously omitted to say much about Karajan’s conducting. The liner notes include the 1957 Gramophone reviewer’s reservations about Karajan’s handling of tempi sounding applied but also quote his admission that he didn’t “expect most listeners to share [his] reserve in this matter of the true Verdian style not being achieved” and I have to say that I am in that camp of those who dissent from his eccentric view; Karajan is a master of the score and I find his pacing to be ideal.
(As an amusing little aside, Nicola Zaccaria here makes his first outing singing the Old Gypsy under the pseudonym “Giulio Mauri”, just as the following year he sings the mandarin in Callas’ Turandot, again in disguise.)
Ralph Moore
