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Così fan tutte – ROH 27.01.1981

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I don’t know if I was actually at this performance, but I was definitely at one of the series this recording was taken from.

My memory hasn’t failed me and it really is as good as I remember.

Sir Colin Davis already had a famous studio recording to his credit and common to both are the saturnine Alfonso of Richard Van Allan. Other than that, his cast here is easily equal to that on the studio set, and, as far as the men are concerned, possibly surpasses it, with Stuart Burrows a more mellifluous, if les characterful, Ferrando than Gedda and Thomas Allen absolutely splendid as Guglielmo, indeed one of the best on record.

On the distaff side, I find it hard to choose between the two casts. Caballé was a glorious Fiordiligi in the studio, but Te Kanawa is hardly less so, and she is a much more volatile performer here than she often was, possibly spurred on by the vividly acted and sung Dorabella of Agnes Baltsa. Baker, in the studio set, is less histrionic, more gently lovable. I love both performances. Mazzucato is a sprightly Despina, delightfully knowing in her exchanges with Alfonso, but yields something in individuality to Cotrubas in the studio set.

This is 1981, and speeds are occasionally a little slower than we are used to these days, and one should note that, being live, there is a fair amount of stage noise, audience laughter and applause. Otherwise the sound is fine, if not as well balanced as a studio production.

I really enjoyed re-acquainting myself with this wonderful performance, and, though I won’t be throwing away my studio Davis or Böhm/EMI recordings, it sits quite happily on the shelf beside them.

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The famous Giulini Don Giovanni

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Like the Karajan Der Rosenkavalier, Warner’s luxury presentation of this latest re-mastering of the famed Giulini Don Giovanni just adds a little more lustre to one of the greatest opera recordings of all time.

It seems incredible to think that Giulini was actually a last minute replacement for Otto Klemperer, who was originally scheduled to record the opera with this cast but fell ill just as sessions started. We can be thankful now that he was available, for I can’t imagine that Klemperer could have produced the kind of quicksilver, thrillingly exciting performance we get here. The Philharmonia Orchestra were at that time at the top of their game and the orchestral playing is beyond praise. One of the main attractions of the set is the execution of the recitatives, which are brim full of drama and character, no doubt a result  of Walter Legge’s excellent production, and the whole recording feels like a real performance, with the singers brilliantly interacting with each other.

The cast is, without exception, superb; Sutherland, in her first major recording, a beautiful and technically assured Anna; Schwarzkopf, who adopted, in her words, “a sharp, unfriendly tone” to offset Sutherland’s creaminess, a real firebrand of an Elvira; Sciutti a delectably seduceable Zerlina. The men are hardly less brilliant, with Wächter’s dangerously sexy Don almost the equivalent of a swashbuckling Douglas Fairbank Jnr character and Taddei’s manipulative Leporello nicely complementing him. Cappuccilli is a real bully of a Masetto and Frick a commanding and ultimately terrifying Commendatore. If Alva makes slightly less of an impression, that has more to do with the rather passive character of Ottavio than his singing of Ottavio’s lovely arias.

One of the all time classics, beautifully re-furbished in this new re-master.

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Böhm’s classic Così fan tutte

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Così fan tutte is a difficult opera for me these days. The music is sublime, but I find it hard to take the evident misogyny. Consequently I find the best way to listen to it is to ignore as much as possible the plot and listen instead to the emotions the plot provokes, and this is where Mozart’s genius lifts the opera above his subject matter, especially in a great performance such as this one.

Schwarzkopf and Ludwig are a wonderfully contrasted pair of sisters, the latter capturing Dorabella’s more flighty, open hearted nature to perfection. Schwarzkopf is superb as her more haughty, serious sister, imperious in Come scoglio, truly troubled and emotionally shattered in Per pieta, a performance both beautiful and heart-breaking.  Between them, she and Alfredo Kraus make their duet Fra gli’amplessi into a thing of quivering sighs and eroticism. In no other version does that moment of capitulation make quite the effect it does here. Hanny Steffek is just right as Depina, not too sparkily soubrettish, and enjoys herself enormously with Walter Berry’s genially scheming Don Alfonso.

The male lovers are also wonderfully cast, Kraus ardent and poised as the more romantic Ferrando and Taddei a mercurial and vibrant Guglielmo.

Böhm’s experience shines through in every bar and the Philharmonia play sublimely.

I’ve had this recording (originally on LP) in my collection now for almost 50 years now and, though I’ve acquired and heard others since, as a total performance, this one remains my first choice.

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Wunderlich/Böhm Zauberflöte

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No doubt these days some might find Böhm’s approach somewhat too portentous, and there is no denying his seriousness from the first few bars of the overture, but I like it, whilst admitting that it’s not always how I would like to hear the opera.

His cast is stronger on the male side than the female, lead by Wunderlich’s peerless Tamino, a treasurable example of him in a complete opera. Not always as stylish as Simoneau, he brings an approproately heroic dimension to the character, with the added advantage of the sheer beauty of that voice. There really is none better on disc. Franz Crass’s sonorous Sarastro is another asset, as are the Armed Men of James King and Marti Talvela. Hotter is an authoratative Speaker, but his voice is beginning to show signs of age. Fischer-Dieskau may not be a natural for Papageno, and I think I’m right in saying it wasn’t one of his stage roles. Admittedly he misses some of the wide-eyed charm of the best interpreters of the role, but his singing qua singing gives a lot of pleasure and in Bei Männern he gives Evelyn Lear a lesson in pure legato singing.

Which brings me to the women. Lear can be shrill on high, and hardly ever phrases with distinction, her legato leaving something to be desired. No patch, certainly, on the likes of Janowitz, Popp, Margaret Price, Lemnitz, Te Kanawa or even Rosa Mannion, who sings the role on William Christie’s highly recommendable HIP version. Roberta Peters, on the other hand, is a lot better than I remembered, and she does at least sound dangerous, her coloratura glitteringly precise. Lisa Otto is a pert Papagena.

So, still a worthy Die Zauberflöte, and one I woud not want to be without, for Wunderlich’s Tamino at least.

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Elisabeth Schwarzkopf – Unpublished Recordings 1955 – 1958 Bach & Mozart

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Schwarzkopf and her husband Legge loved recording, often making several different recordings of the same repertoire and in their case there was almost as much unpublised material in the vaults as they actually issued. Reasons why so much languished without a home could be manifold. It could be that at the time a slightly different emphasis was preferred, or it might simply be that a coupling could not be found, which surely must have been the case with the performance here of Mozart’s Ch’io mi scordi di te, an aria Schwarzkopf returned to in 1968 with Alfred Brendel, George Szell and the LSO and a performance that has been much admired.

However Schwrzkopf herself had misgivings about the 1968 performance. Ever an astute assesor of her own performances, she told John Steane in her retirement years,

You can hear that it’s too late, if you have a discerning ear, but it is musically good, fine, but it is not the young voice any more, and for Mozart that is not so good – it should be the voice in fuller bloom.

In 1955 the voice certainly was in full bloom and the mid 1950s might arguably be considered the high watermark of her career, vocally at least. This was when she recorded the champagne operettas, Strauss’s Ariadne and the Marschallin and Alice Ford in Karajan’s Falstaff. 1955 was also the year in which she made her US debut in San Francisco as the Marschallin.

Geza Anda, like Brendel in 1968, was a fine Mozartian and the the two artists blend and intertwine with each other deliciously. Ackermann, as so often with Schwarzkopf, is a master accompanist, shaping the music beautifully. The 1968 performance with Brendel and Szell is excellent but, if pushed, I think I would go with this one.

Thurston Dart, teacher of Christopher Hogwood and Sir John Eliot Gardiner among others, is in charge of the Bach items, and, though the instruments used are modern, the style is a million miles away from some of the over-Romanticised performances often heard around this time. Indeed Dart could be considered to be one of the pre-cursors of the HIP movement. Tempi are well chosen and Schhwarzkopf’s singing, though expressive is admirably clean and clear, her tone bright and joyful for the Wedding Cantata, but darker for Mein Herze schwimmt in Blut.

The disc also gives us the chance to hear two performances of the recit and aria Schafe können sicher weiden, the first recorded in 1957, the second the following year. To be honest there is very little difference between the two performances of the aria, but in the recitative Schwarzkopf adopts a slightly more expressive style in the later version.

Hardly anything that Schwarzkopf recorded is without interest and it is good that so much of this unpublished material has now become available, though this does mean a fair amount of duplication for Schwarzkopf completists. I’d say that this disc was worth having for the Mozart alone, but the Bach items are very welcome as well.

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Joan Sutherland – The Art of the Prima Donna

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So what more can one say about this famous two disc recital? It was recorded in 1960, not long after Dame Joan had enjoyed a spectacular success in Lucia di Lammermoor, in 1959, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. She was already 33 and had been a member of the company since 1952, when she had sung Clotilde to Callas’s Norma and the Priestess in Aida. She had sung a wide number of roles there, including Agathe, the Countess, Gilda, Pamina, Eva and even Lady Rich in Gloriana and Jennifer in Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage, but none of these undertakings had prepared anyone for the spectacular success she would have as Lucia, with Serafin, Callas’s mentor, in the pit. The role became her calling card and shortly afterwards she sang it in Paris, at La Scala and at the Met, performances that put her firmly on the map and paved the way for the direction her career would take. Thereafter she concentrated almost exclusively on the bel canto repertoire and many operas were resurrected specifically for her.

Let us try and listen now with fresh ears, as if, for instance, this was the work of a singer new to us today. First impressions would be of the beauty of the voice, the fullness of tone, the ease on high and the way those top notes ring out with brilliance but without a hint of shrillness. We would also notice the rocketing virtuosity and the stunningly accurate coloratura. She also sings with feeling, but the first impressions are definitely vocal. This is an exceptional instrument used with great technical accomplishment. What I don’t think we quite get is a true impression of the size of the voice, which, according to all who heard her in the theatre, was quite exceptional.

Some of the arias (particularly the opening track, Arne’s The soldier tir’d, Handel’s Let the bright Seraphim and Semiramide’s Bel raggio) have become yardsticks against which all subsequent comers might be judged, and almost all the others would no doubt be considered amongst the best versions available. Vocally she has few limitations, though these might include a relative weakness in the lower register. Nor is she ever likely to suddenly throw into relief a word or a phrase and her diction, though a lot better than it was later to become is not particularly clear. We might also note that characterisation is not her strong point. As one aria follows another there is little to distinguish one character from another. We do not get a gallery of different people, as one would with a Callas or a Schwarzkopf.

For many these reservations will not be a problem and of course there is a great deal of pleasure to be had from the purely visceral experience of hearing such a beautiful voice in full bloom tackling with accomplishment a wide range of music. For others, and I would count myself among them, that certain sameness of interpretaion will be a problem and I for one prefer to listen to the recital piecemeal rather than all in one sitting. When listening in sequence, I start out being stunned by the singing but, after a while, my mind starts to wander as one interpretation emerges much the same as the one before. The best arias are, as I intimated above, those in which Sutherland can display her amazing vocal dexterity.

Going back to first impressions, though. There is, as far as I’m aware, nobody singing today who can even approach the accomplishment of what Sutherland achieves here. This two disc set stands as testament to her greatness, before the mannerisms (the poor diction, the mushy middle voice, the droopy partamenti) became apparent and should be in the collection of all those interested in singers and singing.

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Ljuba Welitsch – Complete Columbia Recordings

 

 

Ljuba Welitsch, for the short time her star was in the ascendant, was undoubtedly a star, glamorous both of voice and personality. Renowned the world over for her Salome, a role in which Strauss himself had coached her, she was also known for her Tosca and Donna Anna. Unfortunately she had developed nodules by 1953 and thereafter, though she didn’t retire completely, confined herself to character roles, like the Duenna in the Schwarzkopf/Karajan recording of Der Rosenkavalier.

This two disc set showcases her Salome, Donna Anna and Tosca, as well as Johann Strauss (the Czardas from Die Fledermaus and Saffi’s Gypsy Song from Der Zigeunerbaron). The rest is devoted to Lieder and songs by Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Darogmizhsky, Mussorgsky, Marx, Mahler and Strauss, all with piano accompaniment, even the Vier letzte Lieder.

Whilst we get a good impression of the glamour and the silvery purity on high, the recordings do also rather show up her limitations. Best of the items is the 1949 recording of the Final Scene from Salome under Reiner, though, even here, I prefer the earlier performance she made under Lovro von Matacic in 1944, which, to my mind, has a greater degree of specificity. There is just the suspicion here that she had sung the role too many times; there is a touch of sloppiness in the delivery, which is complelely absent from the earlier recording.

She makes an appreciable Tosca, and something of her stage personality comes across here, but, I hear little of Callas’s detail or Price’s or Tebaldi’s vocal opulence. A tendency to be careless of note values is even more evident in the Donna Anna excerpts, where we also become aware of an unwillingness to vary the volume or colour of her singing. John Steane had similar misgivings in his book The Grand Tradition.

It is hard to think of a voice with a brighter shine to it, or of a singer with greater energy and more sense of joy in that sheer act of producing these glorious sounds. Even here, however, one notes that subtlety is hardly in question; there is little of the lithe seductiveness which Schwarzkopf and Güden bring to the [Fledermaus] Czardas, for instance. And this limits much of her best work, even the Salome in which she made such an exciting impression on her audiences.

 

These limitations are even more evident in the songs with piano, and, though there is still much to enjoy in disc one, I found much of disc two something of a trial to listen to, the voice just too bright and unrelentingly mezza voce. The Strauss Vier letzte Lieder can work with piano, as witness a recording by Barbara Bonney, but here I just longed for the greater subtlety and range of expression of Schwarzkopf or Popp, of Norman or Fleming. The Mahler had me thinking of the shattering Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in the piano accompanied version, and the Schubert and Schumann songs hardly begin to challenge versions by a range of different sopranos from Welitsch’s time onwards.

If I were to choose but one representation of Welitsch’s art, it would absolutely be the 1949 live recording from the Met of Salome under Reiner, but, for a recital I’d go for EMI’s old LP and CD transfer of the 1944 Salome Final Scene, which also has on it a glorious version of Tatyana’s Letter Scene from Eugene Onegin, a disc I reviewed a couple of months back here. This present two disc set is, I’m afraid, a mite disappointing.

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Fritz Wunderlich -Live on Stage

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This issue passed me by when it was first released in 2010, but what a treasure it is. Always a pleasure to hear Wunderlich’s glorious tenor, here we have the added frisson of hearing him live in the opera house.

His Tamino is well known from the Böhm recording. These excerpts are taken from a 1964 Munich performance, where he is joined by Anneliese Rothenberger as Pamina and Karl-Christian Kohn as Sarastro under the baton of Fritz Reiger. As on the Böhm recording, he is an ardently lyrical but also heroic Tamino and remains my touchstone for the role. Don Ottavio’s two arias from a performance of Don Giovanni, conducted by Karajan in 1963 are also superb and Ottavio emerges as a more positive character than he often does, benefiting from Wunderlich’s golden tone, his superb breath control and ease of movement. As in the Jochum recording he is also an ideal Belmonte in Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

The excerpts from Il Barbiere di Siviglia, with Hermann Prey as Figaro, are unfortunately sung in German, but the language does not impede Wunderlich’s superb legato, nor the warmth of his tone, and we get to hear his wonderfully light touch in comedy.

For me, though, the Strauss items are the biggest eye opener. I feel sure that, had Strauss heard them, it would have reconciled him to the sound of the tenor voice. The duet for the Italian Singers in Capriccio (with Lucia Popp, no less) has probably never sounded more gloriously, well, italianate, so beautiful that it elicits a spontaneous round of applause from the Vienna audience. The same could be said for his singing of Di rigori armato from Der Rosenkavalier, which is sung with burnished tone. I doubt any Italian tenor could sing it better. So too, in the excerpts from Daphne and Die schweigsame Frau his liquid legato stays in tact, however tough the going. Did Wunderlich ever make an ugly sound? Somehow I doubt it. Truly he was a prince among tenors.

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Dame Janet Baker sings Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert

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Essential listening, I’d venture to suggest, even for those who already have the Philips Originals box set I reviewed here. Here we have the whole of Baker’s 1977 Beethoven and Schubert recital, of which three items appear on the Philips box, coupled to the Mozart items from her 1974 Mozart and Haydn recital, none of which do.

The prize of this CD is Dame Janet’s superb rendering of Sesto’s arias from La Clemenza di Tito. Not only is it a technical tour de force, the rapid triplet figures at the end of Parto, parto tossed off with breathtaking ease, but the range of expression is extraordinary and personal. I have never heard another singer differentiate so much between the repeated cries of Guardami!; in the first she pleads almost angrily, but in the second her tone changes completely, becoming meltingly beseeching, as if Sesto realises he has gone too far. Furthermore she has the ability to get to the emotional core of the music without ever disrupting its Classical style. Pure genius.

Elsewhere she is in enviable form in a programme that ranges wide, including rarities like Beethoven’s No, non turbati and arias from Schubert’s Lazarus and Alfonso und Estrella. Leppard’s accompaniments, whether conducting the English Chamber Orchestra or on the piano or harpsichord are discreet rather than revelatory, perhaps happy, with such a patrician artist, to let his soloist take the lead.

The recordings, originally made for Philips in quadrophonic sound, are here issued in SACD, though I was listening in simple stereo. They are wonderfully clear and lucid.

Highly recommended.

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Edda Moser sings Mozart

Edda Moser, who was active on the operatic stage during the 1970s and early 1980s, should probably be better known than she is, though many will no doubt remember her from the Joseph Losey film of Don Giovanni in which she played Donna Anna.

Not strictly a recital, this is a collection of excerpts from various Mozart recordings Edda Moser made during the 1970s. Many would no doubt pick Moser for their favourite Queen of the Night, a role she sings on the patchy Sawallish recording, and indeed one notes that most of the music chosen here is for Mozart’s fierier characters.

It starts appropriately enough with the Queen of the Night’s arias and they really are splendid. First of all the coloratura flourishes and high notes are tossed off with ease and yet she also chracterises the music brilliantly. There is authority in her O zittre nicht, rage in her Der hölle Rache. Where many coloraturas sound merely pretty, Moser sounds regal and dangerous.

Next comes Konstanze’s Martern aller Arten which is properly defiant, the coloratura not only accurately executed but filled with affronted contempt. Donna Anna’s Non mi dir displays Moser’s fine legato and she also has the technique to do justice to the coloratura section.

The qualities that make her an excellent Queen of the Night and Konstanze stand her in good stead for Elettra, which she sang on Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt’s recording and she embraces both the lyricism of Idol mio and the fury of D’Oreste, d’Ajace.

The range is exceptional too and during the course of this disc, Moser not only has to sing a low G in Vitellia’s Non piu di fiori but a G in alt in the concert aria Popoli di Tessaglia, an aria Moser herself describes as “Unperformable, written without intelligence, not one beautiful note”. Well I might not go that far, but the high lying flights make impossible demands on the singer, which Moser manages incredibly well. On the other hand the low lying phrases in Vitellia’s aria tax her more and the notes below the stave emerge colourless, almost as if from a different singer.

To finish up we have a couple of examples of her contributions to some of Mozart’s sacred music, which showcase her deep legato and firm line. The voice may not have the creamy beautfy of a Te Kanawa or a Fleming, but it is still a very attractive instrument and she is more responsive to the emotional core of the music than Te Kanawa at least.

This is, without doubt, one of the best Mozart vocal compilations I have come across and is definitely worth hearing.