This performance of
Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice comes live
from the Met in 1940 and was the first
staging at the house since Toscanini’s
25 years earlier. The star is Thorborg,
better known as a towering Wagnerian
but who had performed the part to acclaim
under Bruno Walter. Her Euridice is
the newly arrived Czech soprano Jarmila
Novotna, who had only recently made
her Met debut in La Bohème. She’d
hurriedly left Vienna following the
Anschluss having already inspired Lehár
to write for her (Giuditta, 1934)
and Toscanini, reputedly, to fall in
love with her.
The acetate discs have
suffered some damage with surface scuffing
and some swishes, noticeable very early
on; the Chorus is diffusely captured,
but the orchestra under the young-ish
Leinsdorf manages to be both expressive
(with some old fashioned rallentandi)
and forward moving – fortunately so
as Leinsdorf tended to sprint through
his Wagner nights at the Met - and he
applies the same sort of solution to
this most static and columnar of operas.
Thorborg is especially
strong when the music sits in the middle
of her voice; sometimes lower down she
can lack a degree of projection. Her
powers of histrionic impersonation are
very much there but seldom, if ever,
overdone and the gravity and nobility
of her assumption is tangible. Che
farò is taken at a very reasonable,
non dirge-like tempo – she is, unlike
Ferrier, conversational with it, though
there is a massive slow down in the
central section, as was the custom.
Novotna had studied under Max Reinhardt
in her Berlin days and was a consummate
singer-actor, even this early in her
career. She is expressive, less so than
Thorborg perhaps, or less explicitly
so, but affecting nonetheless. The voice
itself is quite superb. As Amor, Marita
Farell can be a bit "pipy."
So yes there are problems
despite the two principals and Leinsdorf.
There’s quite an abrupt side change
between Deh! Placatevi con me
and the passage beginning Mille pene;
there’s also an alarming pitch drop
in Che puro ciel. The sound is
certainly generally listenable – which
is more than can be said for the extracts
from the 1938 Orfeo, with Thorborg and
this time Bodanzky presiding. The best
thing about these extracts is the radio
interference from another American station
that does add some pep to the proceedings;
otherwise it’s so murky as to be unlistenable.
I’m not aware that
there are any competing versions of
the 1940 Orfeo at the moment; given
that there are no notes at all, just
a cast and track list, this seems to
be natural Guild territory. In the meantime
a cautious welcome to this set.
Jonathan Woolf
Early
Music
Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra/Erich
Leinsdorf 
