I suppose the primary
interest behind this resurrection is
the Butterfly of Victoria de los Angeles.
Her fragile, touching yet detailed assumption
was much cherished. She recorded the
role in the studio twice, in 1954 with
Di Stefano, Gobbi and Gavazzeni, the
second in 1959 with Björling, Sereni
and Santini. I enthusiastically reviewed
a Regis reissue of the first of these
some time ago. So the question is, do
you need this somewhat dimly recorded
live one too?
In the first act the
news is not good. Puccini’s smaller
roles are strange. If they are sung
well – as they were on the Gavazzeni
recording – you hardly notice them.
They are just part of the background,
like the scenery or the orchestra. But
they have to be there and they have
to be right. David Tree’s Goro has an
uncouth, whining voice and it beaches
the opera from the start. We also note
fairly early on that Barbara Howitt’s
Suzuki is ungainly where she has a lot
of words to cope with and unattractive
of tone in the cantabile moments. You
only notice how much some of these characters
actually sing when they’re cast so as
to make you wince.
More serious still
is John Lanigan’s Pinkerton. The voice
is Italianate and elegant, and I’m sure
he could do a nicely turned "Dalla
sua pace" or even "Una furtive
lagrima". His Pinkerton might have
given pleasure in a small provincial
hall but here he just isn’t up to it.
Supposedly powerful high notes are weak
and left as soon as possible. Though
Giuseppe Di Stefano wasn’t the subtlest
of tenors – but Pinkerton is hardly
a subtle character – his voice is the
real thing. Paradoxically, the vulnerability
of de los Angeles’s Butterfly actually
needs to contrast with someone fairly
bullish to make its point. Frankly,
I don’t understand what these three
singers were doing in a supposedly international
opera house. Michael Langdon’s Bonzo
is a fine cameo and Geraint Evans is
a splendid Sharpless but I’ll come back
to him in a moment.
Another point of interest
might be Rudolf Kempe. He was a much
loved figure, in Great Britain particularly,
and he didn’t make too many recordings
of opera. He can certainly conduct Puccini
– would one have doubted it? – and has
the right flexibility and sweetness.
Yet right from the beginning Gavazzeni
sounds like a man with a mission and
he gets a surge and a slancio that
is difficult to resist. Sometimes with
Kempe the music seems to waft along
in a slightly Delian way, nice but not
quite right. He allows de los Angeles
more space with certain phrases, but
I’m not sure she benefits from it.
In Act Two – as the
Ricordi score calls it, here they call
it Act Two Part One – things change
a little. Pinkerton is safely out of
earshot though there are some unpleasant
things from Goro and Yamadori. It is
here that Evans’s Sharpless comes into
its own, moving and humane as he understands
and sympathises with Butterfly’s predicament.
His rich, rounded voice is in its prime.
I praised Gobbi but I think Evans has
an extra dimension.
Kempe’s conducting
is at its most divergent from Gavazzeni’s
in this act. He seems to have had a
particularly symbiotic relationship
with Evans for the music goes at exactly
the right speed for the singer to give
the words all the character he is capable
of. Really, the music takes on a different
character altogether in this act. Under
Kempe, Butterfly’s "Due cose potrei
fare" goes at about half the speed
it does under Gavazzeni. I suppose in
the last resort it is too Mahlerian
and Gavazzeni was closer to the Puccini
tradition, but just once in a while
I’ll return to this starkly powerful
rendering. Here, too, de los Angeles
seizes the chance to give a more pondered
interpretation than usual.
In Act Three – or Act
Two Part Two if you prefer – there are
fewer differences. Gavazzeni tides over
certain moments where Kempe lingers,
but the big moments are not notably
different from each conductor. This
means we’re back to the singers. De
los Angeles is moving as ever but at
certain key moments she seems to turn
away from the microphone so you can’t
quite get the same pleasure as from
the studio recording. Evans is good
again but there’s Howitt and Lanigan
to contend with. The trio between Sharpless,
Pinkerton and Suzuki sounds a bit odd
with a fine Sharpless, an unattractive
Suzuki and a Pinkerton who disappears
just when he should dominate. At his
top B flat he might as well not be singing
at all for all you can hear of him.
So, while the Gavazzeni
is a good cheap way of getting to know
the opera if you don’t mind mono sound,
this is a bit more specialized. De los
Angeles’s admirers will certainly find
certain aspects of the role touched
on more intimately than in the studio.
Kempe’s followers will be glad to have
a new opera in his discography and may
appreciate his intimate approach more
than I did. British opera buffs of a
certain generation will be glad to hear
Geraint Evans in his prime and to catch
a brief snatch of Michael Langdon. The
drawbacks I have described are not likely
to improve with repeated hearings.
The set is lovingly
documented. I am puzzled, though, by
the statement signed by Tony Hall and
Antonio Pappano and presumably taken
from the notes by Alexandra Wilson that
this performance was the first ever
given of an opera at Covent Garden in
the original language. Originally, back
in the 19th century, Covent
Garden was the Royal Italian Opera House
and all operas were sung there in Italian.
This had the slight disadvantage that
a native opera on a Shakespearian theme
like Balfe’s Falstaff had to be translated
into Italian, but actual Italian operas
got original language treatment. In
the early 20th century I
seem to remember reading that Beecham
put on a native opera – could it have
been D’Erlanger’s "Tess"?
– and got a furious letter from a subscriber
who didn’t pay good money "to hear
opera sung in English". And those
bits of "Turandot" under Barbirolli,
the Beecham/Reiner "Tristan",
bits of a Furtwängler "Ring"
and various other things that have surfaced
from the inter-war years, weren’t they
in the original language? And then in
the 1950s, Callas didn’t sing her various
roles in English, I’m sure of that.
And if "Peter Grimes" and
the like weren’t sung in the original
language, whatever language were they
translated into? I realize that there
were other occasions when operas were
given in translation or even with each
singer using the language he or she
preferred. Maybe Alexandra Wilson meant
that it was the first opera to be given
under a new policy of ALWAYS using the
original language, but then as I recall,
in the late 60s it was still touch and
go whether a Slavonic opera would be
sung in English or the original language.
But what are Ms Wilson’s
credentials? An opera "expert"
who thinks you write Giuseppe Di Stefano
with a small "d" needs a refresher
course in her subject. It’s like writing
mcGregor or macLean and filing them
under "G" and "L".
Christopher Howell
Covent Garden Opera Choris, Covent Garden
Orchestra/Rudolf Kempe 
