Poor Mascagni and his debut opera (indeed
most of his oeuvre) have suffered
a lot of criticism through the years:
cheep, crude, banal, badly constructed,
unsophisticated orchestration; the list
could be amended by adding any invective
you can think of. And still it has been
played more than most other operas,
and I have loved it for more than forty
years. I learnt it through the early
1950s Cetra recording complete with
miserable sound, a third-rate tenor
and an over-aged baritone (Carlo Tagliabue).
But both he and the Santuzza, Giulietta
Simionato, were real singing-actors
and could get under the skin of their
characters. I still have a listen to
those crackly old records once in a
while.
But of course there
have been better ones, and the first
really good one was the one under consideration,
sung by some of the regulars of the
Met from this period. An RCA recording
of the early 1950s, in mono of course,
transferred to CD not from the master
tapes but from vinyl records. The opera
is directed by a workaday conductor,
today largely forgotten – is it really
worth our attention? Well, it is
mono; there is a limited dynamic range
and it has a tendency to overload in
heavily scored passages but I suppose
that was inherent in the original tapes
too. That sonic wizard, Mark Obert-Thorn,
has created a very good transfer with
a clean, open sound-picture. He captures
the strings very well – no hardness,
no shrillness. And the voices leap out
of the speakers with great presence.
As for the conductor, he was a real
pro, conducting some performances at
the Met but, more important, loads of
recordings: four complete operas and
lots of separate arias and the like.
Maybe the most famous of them all are
the five duets that Björling and
Merrill made in 1950, including the
Pearl Fisher duo. Listen to the very
start of this Cavalleria recording:
soft, smooth strings - and the strings
are so important in this opera - fine,
natural shadings, building up to that
first important climax with the cymbal
clash. And so he continues, judging
tempos well, never rushing things, not
even in the most dramatic passages,
and not dwelling too long in softer
parts of the score, trying to squeeze
out as much sentiment as possible and
so over-sentimentalizing, which some
conductors do - listen to Sinopoli!
Cellini is a conductor to trust.
But the main reason
for acquiring this recording is still
the singing. Yes, we have the Robert
Shaw Chorale here and very good they
are! And the choral passages are very
important; setting the scene from the
outset: idyllic spring feelings against
which the forthcoming, cruel drama is
unfolded. Then there is the building
up of the central Regina Coeli
scene, before everybody goes into the
church. The chorus take a very active
part in the drinking scene and the off-stage
murder of Turiddu in the finale.
Even more central,
though, are the three main characters:
the wronged Santuzza, the jealous Alfio
and the playboy-like Turiddu, who in
the end realizes what he has done –
when it is too late. Of these three
Robert Merrill really had one of the
most beautiful, most secure baritone
voices imaginable. In the nineteen-fifties
he was at the height of his powers.
At the same time he was no deep actor,
his characters often seem more two-dimensional
than they need to. In this portrait
of Alfio I was surprised to find him
shading down his voice and even changing
the tone colour, both in the duet with
Santuzza and in the exchanges with Turiddu
before the killing.
Zinka Milanov was,
at the time of this recording, not yet
fifty but sounds even older than that;
a distinct drawback. A beautiful instrument
it is and she uses it to good effect,
being really involved and especially
memorable in the duet with Alfio, immediately
before the Intermezzo. This, by the
way, is beautifully played, the big
melody with organ perfectly judged in
tempo. Again, fine shadings - no vulgarity
here!
Back to Milanov: I
get the same feeling as when hearing
a recording of parts of Strindberg’s
Miss Julie, performed by one
of the leading actors of the Royal Dramatic
Theatre in Stockholm during the first
decades of the 20th century
but here recorded when past eighty.
She has all right inflections, can be
alluring, haughty, girlish – it is so
perfect, but it is an old woman’s voice
and it is ... wrong! In the same way
I admire Milanov and wish she had been
twenty years younger.
And so we come to the
tenor, maybe I should write The Tenor.
In a part that has been bawled, shouted,
roared and sobbed by tenors of all sorts,
it is a relief to hear a musical
interpretation. Jussi Björling
never had one of those giant voices
of the Del Monaco or Corelli type, but
he could project it and thanks to the
lighter, more silvery quality he was
still able to shine through even the
most compacted orchestral texture. You
could listen to almost any of these
Björling tracks to hear what I
mean. Listen to the Siciliana (track
2), built into the orchestral introduction
where his legato singing (long lines,
amazing breath control) accompanied
by a quite prominent harp, is so nicely
displayed. Go then to the Santuzza–Turiddu
duet (track 8) which sounds more like
a mother–son duet than a dialogue between
two young lovers. Here he is impassioned,
proud, callous. There is golden tone,
there is intensity. There is no sign
here of the Nordic coolness of which
he has been accused. And the phrase
"Bada, Santuzza, schiavo non sono"
is darkish, almost baritonal. He may
not have been a very impressive actor
on stage but his voice-acting is here
second to none. And in the final pages
of the score the drinking song (track
14) is so intense again although never
distorting the line. Listen also to
"Mamma, quell vino è generoso"
(track 16) with that plangent tone expressing
remorse, anguish. He shades the voice
down memorably before the outburst "s’io
non tornassi" (If I should not
return) but there are no sobs! This
recording should be compulsory listening
for any young tenor aspiring to be a
good Turiddu.
When this version was
new it was very easy to recommend it
to prospective buyers, since the competition
wasn’t that keen. Since then recordings
have come and gone. Which one to buy
today? There is actually a second recording
with Björling, made only a year
before his untimely death in 1960. It
is in much better sound, stereo of course,
recorded in Florence, with another pro
at the helm, Alberto Erede. Erede sports
a good Italian cast with the still young
Renata Tebaldi as Santuzza. I just listened
to a few excerpts with Björling
to be found on a recital in the Grande
Voce Series on Decca. His voice is still
in wonderful shape, freer actually,
than in the RCA recording. It has become
a fraction darker but most obviously
it is much more powerful – Otello doesn’t
seem too far away. His acting is also
more confident. I haven’t heard the
complete recording, though. Almost contemporaneous
with this recording is another Decca,
conducted by Tullio Serafin and the
magnificent trio Del Monaco, Cornell
MacNeil and Giulietta Simionato. If
you want a real blood-and-thunder version
with all the sobs and fortissimo being
the prevailing nuance, this one is for
you. It is unquestionably thrilling
and impressive in an animal way.
The best buy, though,
has still to be the Karajan recording
on DG. It was made in the mid-sixties
with the La Scala forces and with Bergonzi
as Turiddu. And he, like Björling,
is a man of nuances, lighter of voice
than most Turiddus. Karajan also has
the most impressive Santuzza of all,
Fiorenza Cossotto, then barely turned
thirty. This is a performance: gleaming
tone, flashing eyes (yes, you can almost
see them) and passionate. I was lucky
enough to see her in this very part
in Verona, more than twenty years after
this recording was made. Her voice wasn’t
so pure any longer, her vibrato had
widened, but the intensity was there
and you could feel her flashing eyes
at 150 meters’ distance. And the most
remarkable thing about this recording
is still Karajan’s conducting. He has
forgotten anything he has ever read
and heard about Mascagni’s vulgarity.
He plays Cavalleria as he would La Bohème
or even Otello, and makes us realise
that old Pietro wasn’t so bad after
all. But it is also daringly slow, so
much so that in some places the singers
are pressed to their limits. It is almost
ten minutes longer than Cellini’s, and
that is a lot in so short a work.
Still if I were to
buy my first Cavalleria on CD I would
definitely go for the Karajan. It is
on mid-price too in the DG Originals
series. If I wanted a real contrast
as a complement I would buy the Serafin
version, now on Universal’s Eloquence
label at budget price, coupled with
I Pagliacci. Whatever version I bought
I would also get this new Naxos version.
At Naxos’s super-budget price nobody
should hesitate, however many versions
they already have in their collection.
It should be pointed
out that no libretto is included. On
the other hand Keith Anderson’s detailed
track-by-track synopsis is a very good
substitute.
Göran Forsling
Robert Shaw Chorale/Robert Shaw 