Even in Italy, Giordano’s second best-known opera is fringe repertoire.
Just one brief aria, Loris’s “Amor ti vieta”, is regularly excerpted.
Over the years, though, the two leading roles have proved sufficiently
attractive to important singers to prompt revivals. In 1969, as
well as making this recording, Olivero sang it in Lucca (with
Di Stefano, conducted by Napoleone Annovazzi) and Dallas (with
Prevedi, under Rescigno). In 1971 she returned to it in Como with
Giacomini and with Ferruccio Scaglia conducting. Other post-war
Fedoras have included Renata Tebaldi (Naples, 1961 with Di Stefano
and Sereni under Arturo Basile), Virginia Zeani (Barcelona, 1977
with Domingo under Alfredo Silipigni), Renata Scotto (Barcelona,
1988 with Domingo under Armando Gatto), Marcella Pobbe (under
Molinari-Pradelli, no other info) and Maria Guleghina (Covent
Garden, 1995 with Domingo under Downes). Mirella Freni has been
a fairly frequent exponent of the role (La Scala, 1993 alternating
Domingo with Carreras under Gavazzeni; Barcelona 1993, with Carreras
under Stefano Ranzani, Covent Garden, 1994 with Carreras under
Downes). My list has concentrated on the soprano role, but as
you can see, I’ve mentioned some pretty important tenors along
the way. Incredibly, an internet search revealed that bootleg
recordings of all these performances are available from one source
or another, though I tremble to think what many of them sound
like. Freni and Domingo were together again at the Metropolitan
in 1997 under Roberto Abbado and a DVD of this is available from
DG.
As regards recordings,
Cetra were unsurprisingly first off the mark, setting it down
in 1950 with Maria Caniglia, Giacinto Prandelli and Scipio Colombo
in Milan under Mario Rossi. Warner have been busily restoring
the Cetra catalogue to circulation but they don’t seem to have
reached this one yet. Two other early recordings presumably
derive from broadcasts. From Walhall there is a performance
in German with Maud Cunitz and Karl Friedrich under Kurt Schröder
(Frankfurt, 1953). From Eklipse comes what sounds like a typical
Cetra or RAI line-up with Pia Tassinari, Ferruccio Tagliavini
and Saturno Meletti under Oliviero De Fabritiis (Milan, 1954).
But the only modern alternative to the present recording, apart
from the DVD I’ve mentioned, is on Sony with Eva Marton and
José Carreras recorded in Hungary under Giuseppe Patané (issued
in 1987). It doesn’t seem to be available at present.
The opera is based
on a play by Sardou and proves to be a swiftly plotted affair
bristling with spies, nihilists, police informers and the like.
The love between Fedora and Loris is born of misunderstandings
and betrayals and much of the last act is a fine example of
two people speaking at cross-purposes. The famous tenor aria
– also developed as an orchestral intermezzo and alluded to
at the end – is not really the only good tune. An equally memorable
one soars out of the orchestral strings even before the curtain
has risen, and this comes back frequently during the work in
different guises. Arias are kept brief yet several of them seem
as worthy of separate performance on recital records as many
more familiar ones. Most commentators have hit upon the originality
of Fedora’s and Loris’s dramatic exchanges in Act Two taking
place with only the accompaniment of a pianist playing spoof
Chopin. The off-stage chorus and shepherd boy, with accordion,
may seem like mere local colour when they open Act Three, but
intrude poignantly on the final scene and indeed have the last
word. Not an essential opera, maybe, but a very good one.
I have compared
this performance with an off-the-air tape of the 1993 La Scala
revival (Freni/Domingo/Gavazzeni). Since I have to conclude
that this is the better performance, I will point out that it
appears to be available from Legato Classics BUT I have no idea
of the quality of the sound so you should not purchase it without
sampling first.
When this recording
appeared in 1970 it was widely received as a blast from the
past. Quite apart from the opera itself, which had supposedly
dropped from the repertoire for ever, all three leading singers
were considered as having done great things in the ’fifties
and early ’sixties and it was a bit surprising to find they
were still going.
Magda Olivero was
born, according to which reference book you use, some time between
1910 and 1914. Her stage debut was in 1933 in Gianni Schicchi.
She quickly acquired a high reputation, was considered by Cilea
his ideal Adriana Lecouvreur and sang Liù in the first recording
of Turandot (1938 with Gina Cigna conducted by Ghione).
Incredibly, that and the present Fedora are the only
complete operas she officially recorded. In about 1940 she married
and withdrew from the scene but returned ten years later at
the request of Cilea. Her final stage appearance was in Poulenc’s
La Voix Humaine at Verona in 1981. In 1993 she recorded,
with piano accompaniment, extracts from Adriana Lecouvreur
for Bongiovanni and finally announced her retirement in
1994. She is still active, adjudicating competitions and the
like.
Her many admirers
have expressed amazement that she made so few recordings. Certainly,
she should have made more, but I think there is a
reason. She was by all accounts a great singing actress and
no one can question the security of her vocal technique – the
length of her career proves this. But the voice was not perhaps
especially beautiful in itself and it did not age particularly
well. It retained its body and power, but even when she recorded
Iris for the RAI in 1956, and Tosca in 1957, it
was not exactly a young-sounding voice and in 1969 it is definitely
the voice of an elderly woman. We can admire the clarity of
her diction, her breath control, her phrasing, her gut conviction,
but on disc I find the somewhat jaded quality of the voice gets
in the way of total enjoyment. Maybe this was not so in the
theatre.
If we work from
her average birth date, Olivero was 57 when she made this recording.
At the time of the La Scala performance, Mirella Freni was 58,
yet nobody thought of her as a singer from the past. Furthermore,
she gained in dramatic conviction with the passing years. Her
voice is sometimes taken to its limits by Giordano’s writing,
yet it never loses its lustrous sheen, while her interpretation
yields nothing to Olivero’s.
Still, there are
positive features to Olivero’s Fedora and at least it gives
us some idea of what her singing was like. Regarding Mario Del
Monaco, the story is quickly told. A loud and unsubtle artist
at the best of times, his voice was irredeemably hoarse and
frayed by 1969 except, oddly, at the very top, from A flat upwards.
“Amor ti vieta” is a painful experience.
Del Monaco was then
54. In 1993 Domingo was 52. In many ways his story is parallel
to that of Freni for, as we all know, his career was far from
over. He, too, is taken to the limit by Giordano’s vocal writing,
but the rich quality of his voice remains intact. He has never
been an especially imaginative interpreter, but there is at
least a degree of interpretation compared with Del Monaco’s
barking.
Whether Fedora
is a two-singer or a three-singer opera depends on who sings
De Siriex. At La Scala Alessandro Corbelli does a good job but
it remains a two-singer opera. Tito Gobbi, as we know from his
Sharpless, could make quite a lot of not very much. Basically,
the role has a rollicking aria in Act Two – “La Donna Russa”,
adapted from Alabieff – and a dramatic piece of news-breaking
in Act Three. Gobbi was then 54, but bass voices seem to age
less than tenors. Maybe the tone is a little jaded on the upper
notes but then one never did go to Gobbi for sheer tonal beauty
– for that you went to Giuseppe Taddei. No, Gobbi is certainly
one good reason for getting this.
The other parts
are smallish and are well-taken. There is just one of the comprimari
who has a nice voice but sings syllabically as though unaware
of what she is saying, and I’m afraid that’s Kiri Te Kanawa,
then at the very beginning of her career. You may be surprised
to see the name of Pascal Rogé in the cast but Lazinski doesn’t
sing, or even speak, he plays, and very beautifully too. La
Scala’s Arnold Bosman is somewhat heavy-handed. Incidentally,
Olga’s Act Two aria “Il Parigino è come il vino” is omitted.
It is not one of the score’s most inspired moments but without
it “Amor ti vieta” arrives too quickly. It is included at La
Scala.
Gardelli is reliable
enough but even before the voices have entered he has released
a splurge of vulgar brass that Gavazzeni manages to keep under
control. The intermezzo based on “Amor ti vieta” is pleasant
enough under Gardelli but Gavazzeni caresses it and builds it
up so that while it lasts you think it’s the most beautiful
thing you’ve ever heard. Great conducting and it gets an ovation.
For much of the time there’s not a lot of difference but when
the conductors do differ – mainly in the Third Act – Gavazzeni’s
solutions are invariably more illuminating.
So there you are.
You can try to find the Gavazzeni – sampling it first. Or you
can hear Freni and Domingo on DVD four years later. No doubt
the Cetra will reappear sooner or later but it won’t have modern
sound. The Sony could be interesting if it is reissued. Or you
can buy this. You will get a magnificent Des Siriex, an imperfect
souvenir of a great singing actress, a ghastly sample of a stentorian
tenor in decline and acceptable conducting.
Francesca da Rimini
is of course a character from Dante, but Zandonai’s opera is
based in Gabriele D’Annunzio’s play on the same subject which
gave the story a typically decadent twist. D’Annunzio-based
operas make a fascinating chapter in the history of early 20th
century Italian music. In spite of several by Zandonai’s more
famous teacher Mascagni and by his more highly-regarded contemporary
Pizzetti, Francesca da Rimini is the only one which has
so far attained even a foothold on the general repertoire. In
Italy it gets an occasional revival and in 1984 it re-entered
the Met repertoire with Renata Scotto and Placido Domingo, conducted
by James Levine. This team made many notable recordings but
Francesca is a work they didn’t repeat in the studio.
However, a video of the Met production, directed by Brian Large,
was issued in 1999. Since the production was praised for its
visual aspects, those wishing to know this work should probably
be directed to this.
Even back in 1970,
when these extracts appeared on LP, Gramophone’s Andrew Porter
had to point out that Zandonai was not well represented by extracts
since the composer’s elaborate web of thematic cross-references
could only be appreciated when heard whole. At that time he
could only advise readers to seek out the 1952 Cetra recording
with Caniglia, Prandelli and Tagliabue, conducted by Antonio
Guarnieri. This set has a particular interest in that Guarnieri
is sometimes claimed as the third of the great trio of Italian
conductors, on a level with Toscanini and De Sabata. Very little
recorded evidence exists to support this view.
Since 1970 the opera
has had a shadowy existence on disc. By 1981 Cetra was practically
moribund as far as new productions were concerned but was living
handsomely off Italy’s “20-year law” according to which copyright
lapsed on live performances and broadcasts after only 20 years.
They therefore brought out a set of LPs, in passable mono sound,
based on a 1961 Trieste production with Leyla Gencer, Renato
Cioni and Anselmo Colzani, conducted by Franco Capuana. If Magda
Olivero made too few discs, to the best of my knowledge Leyla
Gencer made no official ones at all. And yet her reputation,
at least in Italy, was enormous. At La Scala, she was one of
the very few sopranos the so-called “widows of Callas” were
prepared to put up with after the diva’s withdrawal from the
scene. During the 1990s Italy was brought to heel by an EU directive
and copyright on live performances and broadcasts now lapses
there after 50 years, as it does in most other countries, so
this recording will not see the light of day again before 2011,
unless someone thought it worthwhile negotiating an official
release with the copyright holders.
In 1988 RCA issued
a recording with Raina Kabaivanska, William Matteuzzi and Matteo
Manuguerra, conducted by Maurizio Arena. Kabaivanska is yet
another soprano famed as a great singing-actress but who has
recorded little. In her case, though, the problem is a spreading
vibrato which does not take kindly to the microphones. A further
recording was issued in 1997 by Schwann with Elena Filipova
and Frederic Kalt under Fabio Luisi. Neither of these appears
to be available at present. Indeed, apart from the Met video,
your only hope of hearing the entire opera at the moment lies
with the pirates, who are offering Kabaivanska and Domingo under
Queler and the 1959 La Scala revival which had Olivero and Del
Monaco, presumably in fresher voices than on the extracts of
ten years later, under Gavazzeni.
For better or worse,
my comparisons have been with the now-banned 1981 Cetra. They
tell a similar tale to that of Fedora. Olivero’s voice
does not sound young, but she is still capable of exquisite
high pianissimos and once or twice even shames Del Monaco into
an attempt at something less than fortissimo. In a way these
extracts show, even more than Fedora, what a formidable
singing-actress she must have been. However, Leyla Gencer was
also a great singing-actress by all accounts – she certainly
sounds it here – and her voice retains a golden lustre even
in the heaviest moments.
Del Monaco’s bull-at-the-gate
approach – without the vocal quality of his earlier years –
is once again a severe trial. Renato Cioni was for a short period
one of Italy’s great hopes for a new tenor. I don’t quite know
what happened but he faded away and is mostly remembered for
his participation in the first Sutherland Lucia di Lammermoor.
He is far more musical and attractive than Del Monaco.
Giovanni lo Sciancato
would have been a fine role for Gobbi but we can hardly blame
Decca for not engaging him to sing the two lines that are all
we hear of the part in these extracts. Anselmo Colzani, who
died earlier this year, was a favourite at the Met and puts
in an impressive performance.
When I listened
to the Trieste recording I was entranced by an opera with an
individual orchestral sound and atmosphere, quite unlike any
other I know. I realize now that Franco Capuana deserves a lot
of credit for this. I just don’t find that sound or that atmosphere
on the Decca extracts. Rescigno sounds plausible enough if you
haven’t a comparison but his treatment of the score as a mish-mash
of Puccini and Richard Strauss actually does it a grave disservice.
All things considered, we must hope that a reissue of the Trieste
performance will not be delayed too long after 2011.
The Decca issue
has a handsome booklet with synopses, librettos and translations
of both operas. It is a little frustrating to learn that the
original LP issue of Fedora also had an essay by William
Weaver, but that’s what they call progress. There is the usual
cock-up in writing Italian names which include a “Di” or a “De”,
so we get “Mario del Monaco” and “Piero de Palma”. The 1970
Gramophone review added a third mistake: “Kiri te Kanawa” (her
first appearance in those pages?). At least they were consistent!
Though it will probably
be quite useless, let me try to clarify once again this matter,
since readers may wonder why we should write Mario Del Monaco
but Francesca da Rimini. When the “Di” or “De” is part
of a person’s surname, it has a capital letter and he goes in
the phone book under “D” – Del Monaco, Di Stefano, De Sabata,
etc. In olden times people didn’t always have clearly identifiable
surnames and so the town they came from got added. “Da Rimini”
wasn’t Francesca’s surname – she was actually a daughter of
Guido Minore da Polenta – she was “Francesca from Rimini”, just
as her father was “Guido the Younger from Polenta”. Thus Leonardo
was identified from the other Leonardos in the town by the nickname
“Leonardo from Vinci” – Leonardo da Vinci. The same goes for
Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
and so on. They came from Palestrina and Caravaggio, even if
we think of these today as their actual names. In this case
we write a small “d”. A similar situation applies if the nickname
tells us something about the person. So Francesca’s husband
was known as Giovanni lo Sciancato – John the Crippled – while
his younger brother, Francesca’s lover, was Paolo il Bello –
Paul the Beautiful. Again, we write a small “d”.
Christopher
Howell
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