Giacomo PUCCINI (1858-1924)
La fanciulla del West (1910)
Birgit Nilsson (soprano: Minnie), Joćo Gibin (tenor: Johnson), Andrea Mongelli (baritone: Rance), Nicola Zaccaria (bass: Jake Wallace), Gabriella Carturan (mezzo-soprano: Wowkle), Carlo Forti (bass: Billy Jackrabbit, Castro), Renato Ercolani (tenor: Nick), Florindo Andreolli (tenor: Trin), Leonardo Monreale (bass: Happy), Antonio Constantino (tenor: Joe), Enzo Sordello (baritone: Sonora), Dino Mantovani (baritone: Bello), Dino Formichini (baritone: Harry), Antonio Cassinelli (bass: Ashby), Giuseppe Costariol (bass: Sid), Giuseppe Morresi (bass: Jim Larkens), Angelo Mercuriali (tenor: Pony Express rider), Chorus and Orchestra of La Scala Milan/Lovro von Matačić
Rec. Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 1958
PRISTINE AUDIO PACO177 [56:26 + 69:56]
When I last discussed a recording of Puccini’s La fanciulla del West some five years ago, I was dealing with an Alto reissue of the old Decca set under Franco Capuana recorded in 1958. In the course of that review I referred tangentially to this contemporaneous EMI set with Birgit Nilsson, commending the soprano’s assumption of the title role in comparison with Renata Tebaldi but otherwise dismissing the recording with faint praise. This Pristine XR remastering has compelled me in some considerable measure to revise that opinion.
Recordings made by EMI at La Scala during the 1950s, which principally featured Maria Callas, often tended to suffer from sound that tended to appear harsh by comparison with the Decca recordings of Italian opera made at the same period, which in their turn usually featured Callas’s rival Renata Tebaldi. When the two rival companies, by sheer co-incidence, came to record The Girl of the Golden West at almost exactly the same time, Birgit Nilsson was recruited at a late stage to take over as the principal soprano in a cast that was otherwise much the same La Scala crew who had featured in the earlier Callas sets of Puccini operas. She proved to be an inspired choice, her heroic soprano exactly suited for the strenuous role in a manner that challenged Tebaldi to her very limits and beyond. And although she had never sung the part on stage, she packed plenty of dramatic punch as the tough Western girl who finds herself falling in love for the first time with a man who is not at all the man she thinks he is.
She is assisted in her assumption by the conductor, Lovro von Matačić, an unlikely choice for an Italian opera but an inspired one. He clearly loves the score, and relishes the many lyrical moments as well as the dramatic ones. Often he slows down for the climax of a phrase, and indeed in the big tenor aria Ch’ella mi creda he almost grinds to a halt in the central section (CD2, track 17); but this is perfectly acceptable in the context of a performance as heartfelt as this. His orchestra too is superior to that supplied for Capuana in the Decca set, with the squealing Stravinskian woodwind in the passage before the card game in Act Two given with all the required ferocity (in my review of the Capuana set I described his treatment of them as sounding “almost incidental”). There are places where the La Scala trumpets are allowed to blisteringly dominate the violins, whose sound they should simply be reinforcing; but these mostly come in the earlier stages of Act One, and later on the balance is better judged. There is also a curious recession in the orchestral sound just after Minnie and Johnson start their ‘love duet’ in Act Two, where the Decca set with its howling wind machine is enthrallingly evocative of the Californian blizzard (CD 2, track 5). And the voice of Jake Wallace near the beginning of Act One is just a little too far offstage for his lovely melody of Che faranno to properly register (CD1, track 4).
But these are minor considerations in the context of a set which has always been downgraded for its inferior sound, but here comes across (thanks to the sensitive remastering of Andrew Rose) as vastly improved. The balance between voices and orchestra sounds thoroughly natural, although some of the comprimario singers from the La Scala company are rather submerged; for a thoroughly satisfactory balance we had to wait for the DG set of the opera from Covent Garden in the 1970s.
And the singing of the principals, too, actually sounds better. Quite apart from Nilsson’s stunning performance as Minnie, Joćo Gibin is far from being inadequate as the bandit Dick Johnson; he occasionally produces real heroic tones without lapsing into the histrionics of Mario del Monaco on the Decca set (I described one phrase in the latter as “one long brazen yowl”). Gibin is not in the same league as Domingo was later to become in the role, but he is far from inconsiderable. Andrea Mongelli as the sheriff Jack Rance is rather less impressive, a slightly woolly villain whose delivery of his final “Buona notte” after he has been defeated in the poker game is conventionally blustery and threatening; the clipped politeness of Sherrill Milnes on DG is far more genuinely frightening. Nicola Zaccaria is luxury casting in the role of Jake Wallace, once he has got onto the stage and we can actually hear him; although this part is of course an absolute gift to any lyric bass. Oddly enough Giuseppe Morresi, who was Jim Larkens in the Capuana set, turns up here as well in the same role; and Angelo Mercuriali is demoted from Joe to “Pony Express Rider”. Was there really that much of a dearth of comprimario male singers in Italian opera houses at that time?
No, the sound is still not quite up there in the Decca/Capuana class, with the middle register in particular lacking resonance as those strings surge up in the opening bars; but it is a vast improvement from earlier transfers of this recording, and the singing and playing is probably better than with Decca as well. For a representation of the score the DG set under Zubin Mehta must remain the one to beat, both in terms of performance and recording. But those who love the Girl will also want to hear Nilsson in the title role, and for that this newly remastered set is clearly an absolute necessity. There are moments here which are stunningly and heart-breakingly effective.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
