Magda Olivero suffered
a crushing verdict at her audition by
Ugo Tansini in Turin; "the girl
has neither a voice, nor musicality,
nor personality. She has nothing."
Either Tansini was having a bad day
or Olivero’s subsequent teacher Luigi
Gerussi did something astonishing with
her, other than insisting she "sustain,
sustain!" The results, as this disc
demonstrate, show her to have been a
consistently impressive musician whose
sole complete commercial recording,
of Turandot in 1938, surely deserved
to be augmented. Partly this may have
had to do with a premature retirement
in 1941 but it doesn’t explain why,
a decade later on her return to increasingly
wide appreciation, she wasn’t taken
into the recording studios with at least
some degree of frequency.
Olivero was born near
Turin in 1910; she became better known
in the 1950s constantly adding roles
to her repertoire and making her New
York Met debut as late as 1975, and
giving her last stage performance (Poulenc)
in 1981, at the age of seventy-one.
She contained to give recitals however.
What one hears in these discs, made
between 1939 and 1953 and all for Cetra,
is a very individual voice with a most
unusual, though not always evident,
fluttery vibrato. Her Boito illustrates
it well – an insistent, tightly controlled
and dramatic approach in which the flutter
distracts but doesn’t destroy the expressive
component. In her Cilea we find equal
amounts of power and characterisation
– she’s a really strong personality,
dramatic and seemingly unconcerned by
studio limitations – as well as a real
ability to convey power but in a properly
(vocally, theatrically) controlled way.
It’s a fine line and she has the measure
of it.
Her Tosca is sensitive,
elegant, and technically impressive
and her Mimi surely gives the lie to
the earlier aspersions as to her musicality;
she colours consonants supremely well
and she abjures pile-driving theatrics
in favour of a tremendous refinement.
In Suor Angelica we can hear the intrusive
flutter once more, but one should note
that, for all its idiosyncrasy, her
sound is essentially chaste. Her Alfano
has real declamatory power and her French
repertoire sees the vibrato put to devilishly
charming effect. One of the surest examples
of her effortless way with floating
the voice is her Catalini Loreley of
1953 – tremendous.
Throughout the accompaniments
are accomplished, not least from one
Ugo Tansini who had clearly repented
of his earlier judgement enough to conduct
the Turin radio orchestra for her in
1939 and 1940. One hopes he felt thoroughly
chastened. Transfers are good from clean
and clear sounding Cetra originals,
the biographical note is packed with
detail, and this is another in Preiser’s
long line of enviably successful single
artist discs.
Jonathan Woolf
Magda Olivero (soprano) 
