Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901)
Rigoletto (1851)
Rigoletto - Ettore Bastianini (baritone); Gilda - Renata Scotto (soprano); Duca di Mantova - Alfredo Kraus (tenor); Sparafucile - Ivo Vinco (bass); Maddalena - Fiorenza Cossotto (mezzo-soprano); Giovanna - Clara Foti (mezzo-soprano); Monterone - Silvio Maionica (bass); Marullo - Virgilio Carbonari (baritone); Borsa - Enzo Guagni (tenor); Conte di Ceprano - Giuseppe Morresi (baritone); Contessa di Ceprano - Clara Foti (mezzo-soprano)
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino/Gianandrea Gavazzeni
rec. July 1960, Teatro della Pergola, Florence, Italy. Ambient Stereo
PRISTINE AUDIO PACO184 [55:35 + 63:48]
If you read Gramophone magazine and you also read Musicweb, then the chances are you’ll enjoy Gramophone’s “Collection” item where every month they take one work and compare the available recordings to come up with an overall winner. Rigoletto was their candidate for October 2021 when, to my great surprise, Mark Pullinger picked this recording of the opera as his overall top choice, with the caveat that it had never had a decent CD release and that the sound was pretty patchy and needed a decent transfer.
Step forward Andrew Rose of Pristine, who also read that “Collection”
and took it as his cue to provide the much-needed transfer for this
performance. It seems appropriate, therefore, to start this review with
a consideration of the sound. My colleague Ralph Moore, who has forgotten
more about Rigoletto than I have ever known (see
his survey), welcomed this release before me, but expressed reservations
about Pristine’s sound, partly because he could compare it to
a separate release from the Andromeda label.
Perhaps because I haven’t heard the Andromeda release, I don’t share Ralph’s reservations. This Pristine remastering sounds fantastic, to my ears. It’s clean, bright and clear, with everything close-up and focused while still leaving enough space around the sound to breathe and give it atmosphere. True, it sounds very much like early stereo (which it is): there is a little tinniness in places, and there is a little distortion at the climaxes, most damagingly in the final bars. It’s a shame, because it’s avoidable; something you’ll notice in the much finer recorded sound of, say, Solti’s Rheingold, which was made around the same time. However, the stereo is clear and clean, never more effectively than in the quartet which has all four voices spread very satisfyingly across the stereoscope. Importantly, the original engineers also used the stereo to position the voices and enhance the drama: listen in headphones and you’ll hear certain scenes come alive with action, especially Act 3. Not every listener enjoys this, but it always gets a thumbs-up from me. True, I haven’t heard this recording in any other issue, and I think that this is the first Pristine Audio release I’ve heard that didn’t originate as a mono recording; but that doesn’t stop me recognising the quality of what I heard, and I think it’s a great achievement.
I enjoyed the performances too, though they’re more of a mixed bag, and all three of the principals are disappointingly monochrome in their emotional range. Bastianini’s Rigoletto is a triumph, though he is a bit of a one-trick-pony: baleful nobility is his speciality, and if you’re looking for that then he will challenge any other baritone out there, even Tito Gobbi. There aren’t many more dimensions to his characterisation, though, and every other emotion – terror, malice, love, sorrow – effectively comes across as an offshoot of that baleful nobility. Renata Scotto is a clean, bright Gilda, if also slightly one-dimensional. She sings the two great duets with her father as though they were effectively the same, and there is no sense of the trauma Gilda undergoes between the two. It’s a beautiful sound, though, and she is moving in the death scene. Kraus’ Duke is even more one-dimensional, with a reedy sound I couldn’t warm to. Aside from an ill-advised top D in his cabaletta, however, he’s pleasant to listen to, though I would never do go him for character development. Fiorenza Cossotto is a marvellously throaty Maddalena, while Ivo Vinco’s bottomless bass makes for a mighty Sparafucile. Gianandrea Gavezzeni observes a few irritating cuts, but otherwise gives a really convincing performance which is well-paced and judged with an ear to the drama. You’ll rarely hear the chords of the prelude sound so doom-laden.
So I’m glad I heard this recording, and I take my hat off to Pristine for the achievement in the sound. It hasn’t changed my mind about the top choice, though. For me that remains Bonynge’s Decca recording with Milnes, Pavarotti and Sutherland. It was one of the first CDs I ever bought, and I still find it absolutely thrilling to listen to. The sound is brilliant and the performances brim with such confidence that they still take my breath away today. Gavezzeni’s performance is welcome, but it can’t challenge that one.
Simon Thompson
Previous review: Ralph Moore
