I
have often complained that the inadequate documentation of these
Cetra reissues has sent me scurrying to the Internet in order
to find out something about the performers. So congratulations
this time not only for good notes on the music and a synopsis
– as is usual – but also biographies of the three singers and
one of the conductors – nothing about Fighera, and I can only
add that he appeared regularly with the Turin orchestra at that
time. Not that Taddei will be a new name to most music lovers,
and opera collectors will know of Ribetti and Mantovani too, though
their appearances with the major companies were generally in minor
roles.
Where
Cetra have not changed is in providing us with the librettos in
Italian only, and I wonder if I would have enjoyed this disc as
much as I did if I had not been fluent in Italian myself, for
the slender plot of Pergolesi’s Intermezzo requires full understanding
of the various gags, as in the scene where Livietta speaks in
French and Tracollo, hearing a word or two here and there which
sounds like an Italian word, answers at total cross-purposes.
Italian speakers will also relish in full the delivery of the
recitatives, as natural and vivacious as speech itself. Another
gag is Tracollo’s singing falsetto on his first entry – listeners
not expecting this will think they are hearing a not very good
counter-tenor. Still, there are some nice arias – Livietta’s "Caro,
perdonami" is most imaginatively realised by singer and conductor
– and admirers of Stravinsky’s "Pulcinella" will hear
some familiar phrases along the way.
We
like to think that we have learned how to sing baroque music only
in the last two or three decades, but when both singers have such
bright, well-placed voices without a trace of excessive vibrato
or heavy-duty operatic delivery it is difficult to see what advances
have been made. The conducting is also clean and lively. Just
two features will date the performance a little. Very likely such
music would now be played with one string per part; and if a slightly
larger group were employed, there would still only be one double
bass. I’m not suggesting that the orchestra here is enormous,
but the sound is a little bass-heavy, in spite of the liveliness
of the playing itself. The other oddity is that, while a harpsichord
accompanies the recitatives, it stays silent when the orchestra
is playing. All the same, the performance is most enjoyable and
a valid tribute to the pioneering work of the Villa Olmo company
which revived no fewer than twenty-four works of this kind in
a single year. The recording is remarkably good for the date.
The
recording of Cimarosa’s little jeu d’esprit is more what
we expect from Cetra, the voice well caught and to the fore, a
rather woolly orchestra in the background. But it’s not bad and
the main thing is Taddei. Although he took on plenty of big roles
during his long career (Guglielmo Tell, Scarpia, Hans Sachs ...)
he was also a famed Mozartian and made a special study of baroque
vocal style. So he enters fully into the spirit of the piece without
ever seeming too big for the part. He was the first singer in
modern times to perform this work, for the RAI in 1953; the success
of this performance led to the present recording, which uses an
edition by Maffeo Zanon, who orchestrated the recitatives.
Here
is another piece where I feel that only listeners well versed
in Italian are going to get the most out of this sketch of a singer
rehearsing a not very co-operative orchestra but, again, a translation
would have helped. I have another reservation, but maybe this
is inherent in the piece. When the Maestro pulls up the various
sections – "What are you up to, my dear oboe? ... Damned
double bass, what the devil’s happening here? ... Please, oh please,
pay attention and learn to count properly ... " – the instruments
in question have actually been playing quite nicely. And conversely,
when he goes into raptures after the violins have got their little
phrase right, their performance here is unremarkable. I’m wondering
if the orchestra should have entered into the spirit of the thing
and played deliberately badly in order to be corrected more convincingly.
But on the other hand, would such a farcical approach, however
hilarious in a live performance, stand repeated hearings?
More
recent recordings have been made by Claudio Desderi, Fernando
Corena and József Gregor. The latter has an obvious coupling
in Telemann’s "Der Schulemeister" but has been criticised
for an exaggeratedly farcical approach; the other two come in
rather mixed company – Desderi in a rag-bag programme of "La
Scala at the Bolshoi", Corena as the filler for a complete
"L’elisir d’amore" where the conducting of István
Kertesz has found little favour. So Taddei sounds like the best
buy. A modern version of "Livietta" comes from Nancy
Argenta and Werner van Mechelen with La Petite Bande under Sigiswald
Kuijken, a very well filled double bill (80 minutes) with "La
Serva Padrona". But I think that opera buffs who get this
to add another Taddei performance to their collection will not
regret having the Pergolesi.
I
have mentioned the excellent notes, which are anonymous. Not so
the English translator, Nigel Jamieson, who gets into the booklet
three times over. But I wonder if his work was tampered with,
since entire pages go without a hitch, to be followed by some
very unfortunate expressions indeed. A recurrent grammatical mistake
comes in such sentences as "The Stabat Mater written
for soprano, contralto strings and organ, that immediately spread
throughout Europe, was transcribed ...". Unfortunately, you
can’t substitute "which" with "that" when
the relative pronoun is a non-defining one. And what are we to
make of this? "Ennio Gerelli, a trace of whose career
can still be found at the Municipale di Reggio Emilia in a Dido
and Aeneas performance by Purcell and in a Voix humaine
performance by Poulenc in 1970 ...". And I always thought
Purcell died young! Of course, even a perfectly competent translator
can come a cropper if music is not his subject. Thus we learn
that "Among the certain instrumental works by Pergolesi are
the Concert for violin, strings and continuous ...". Surely
anyone with a smattering of knowledge about classical music knows
that "concerto" and "continuo" remain unchanged
in English. Then we discover that Pergolesi wrote an "Oratory"
La Fenice sul rogo. But an "oratory" is a building
for prayer, a sacred story set to music is an "oratorio"
(the same word does for both in Italian). Curiously, the poet
Metastasio is transcribed into Latin as "Metastasius"
and it is explained that "Between the 15th and 17th century
the interlude, with praise and songs, included other spectacular
elements such as ballet and pantomime." If you don’t see
where "praise" comes into it, neither did I. Consulting
the original Italian text I find they are laudi, a type
of sacred song common at the time. There is no English translation
so the word must be left as it is, maybe italicised; any good
English musical dictionary will explain it.
Christopher
Howell
Elda Ribetta (Livietta),
Dino Mantovani (Tracollo), Complesso Strumentale del Teatrino di Villa Olmo/Ennio
Gerelli