Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani

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The 70s saw a renewed interest in Verdi’s Vespri, but it’s this May, 1978, live performance from the Maggio Musicale in Florence which satisfies our emotional cravings for another of the composer’s musical feasts. And conductor Riccardo Muti makes sure we get a complete meal. Starting with a commanding and intense reading of the overture to the vengeful choral outbursts of the Sicilians’ massacre of the French, Muti is in total control of all his forces. His overall passion for this opera guarantees a great performance.

Although soprano Renata Scotto had sung the role of the duchess Elena previously, she arrived in Florence with a vocal presence new to her interpretation. Here she is so completely committed vocally and dramatically to the role, her singing takes on an emotional charge that she sustains throughout the work. Renato Bruson’s Monforte shows again the singer’s ability to sing every marking and note completely. He is able to shower the role with every emotional expression Verdi demands from his baritones. Bass Ruggiero Raimondi’s unique approach to Procida covers every piano and forte Verdi thought of giving his patriot. Raimondi’s scenes with Scotto are particularly lovely and searing; their understanding of Verdi’s intentions bring total satisfaction. Tenor Veriano Luchetti as Arrigo is not able to meet every vocal challenge as his three collegues do, but he keeps up dramatically. He does hold up his end vocally, however, in the long and heartfelt final trio with Scotto and Raimondi. It is one of Verdi’s most unusual and musically interesting sections in an opera filled with distinctive musical flavors. Even the audience’s hearty reactions seem to follow Muti’s expert guidance. This Vespri is live opera at its most rewarding.

Gala GL 100.611 3CD

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Great Recordings Of The Century Verdi La Traviata

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GREAT RECORDINGS OF THE CENTURY: Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901)

La Traviata Opera in three acts (1853)

Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave after ‘La Dame aux amelias’ by Alexandre Dumas fils

Violetta Valery – Renata Scotto (soprano) Flora Bervoix – Sarah Walker (mezzo) Anina – Cynthia Buchan (soprano) Alfredo Germont – Alfredo Kraus (tenor) Giorgio Germont – Renato Bruson (baritone) Gastone – Suso Mariategui (tenor) Barone Douphol – Henry Newman (baritone) Dottore Grenvil – Roderick Kennedy (bass)

Ambrosian Opera Chorus Chorus Master John McCarthy Band of the Royal Marines (Royal Marines School of Music) Principal Director of Music Lieut-Col. J. R. Mason Philharmonia Orchestra cond. Riccardo Muti

CD1 contains the full libretto and translations in pdf form which can be accessed from any computer equipped with CD-ROM drive and Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0

Recorded 5-15.VII. 1980, Kingsway Hall, London

Alfredo Kraus records by permission of Carillon Records

CD1 75:00 CD2 54:06

1982 EMI records Ltd. copyright 2008 EMI Records Ltd.

EMI CLASSICS 5 096942

In Bruno Tosi’s Italian biography of Renata Scotto, he and colleague Carlo Marinelli list the soprano’s last appearance as Violetta in September 1973, in Tokyo. In the seven- year interim before Scotto recorded this Traviata with conductor Riccardo Muti in 1980, the busy Diva added a number of new roles to her repetoire: Bellini’s Norma, Verdi’s Luisa Miller, Il Trovatore, and Don Carlo, Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, Puccini’s Il Trittico and one of her most vocally-challenging roles, La Gioconda by Ponchelli. In order to appreciate the soprano’s sympathic and at times intense portrayal of Giuseppe Verdi’s emotionally complex heroine, listeners are asked to accept her vocal condition in this studio recording which shows the wear these roles took on her lyric soprano.

Before taking a closer look at what Scotto had to offer her public by taking on this role again, we can look for reasons why EMI chose to re-issue this recording as one of their Great Recordings of the Century.

The most striking element is Riccardo Muti’s conducting. Some listeners may feel that at times he drives the music a little too hard, but there is no doubt the conductor gives the tender moments their due. This is particularly evident in Muti’s way with Violetta’s introspective arias, Ah, fors’ e lui, marked Andantino in Act One and Addio del passato, marked legato e dolce in Act Three. Muti and Scotto made the choice of recording the opera as Verdi wrote it, so we get to hear both verses of each aria. Also, in the preludes at the beginning of Act One and Act Three, Muti uses the strings to show the depth of Violetta’s melancholy. On the other hand, the conductor drives the music in the party scenes emphasizing the risky, haphazard behavior that permeates the life of a courtesan. One can even hear a sliver of anger in Muti’s emotionally-laden interpretation.

Muti brought Alfredo Kraus on board to sing Alfredo Germont. Kraus and Scotto had been friends and colleagues since the 60s and two of their collaborations, around the time of this recording, were Manon in Chicago and Werther in Dallas. As in these productions, Kraus brought the same style and vocal grace to this recording. Unfortunately, the studio microphone accentuates the nasal quality his singing sometimes took on at this stage of his career, but his close artistic association with Scotto more that makes up for it. The intimate quality of their duets engenders a welcomed interpretative maturity not found in other recordings.

Renato Bruson sings with an attractive dark sound as the elder Germont even without the ardent overtones typical of Verdi baritones. Technically, however, he easily fills out each note and gives full expression to every dynamic marking; the baritone offers a complete vocal interpretation that today’s Germonts find challenging. In the Act Two duet, Bruson and Scotto create a touching scene where Violetta’s heart is broken by Germont’s request to sacrifice her love for Alfredo so that his daughter may marry without any social opprobrium. Here Bruson matches Scotto’s sympathic illumination of the the text.

Scotto’s ingrained artistic sense certainly allows her to express every emotion Verdi flooded into this character the composer loved creating. If at this point in her career, the soprano wasn’t able to command the vocal authority to cover every vocal demand, she is still able to portray the musical essence of the role. Patrick O’Connor, in his 2003 piece in Gramophone titled Dramatic Diva, said of this recording, “There are moments in this latter performance as Violetta where the rawness of her voice betrays her years…yet it is a small price to pay for the sincerity of the interpretation, and in every scene she illuminates the text with subtle insights.” If the listener appreciates the dramatic consequences of the Scotto/Muti collaboration, this recording is for you.

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Bellini, I Puritani: Seattle Opera

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By Bernard Jacobson

Reprinted with permission from Seen and Heard – Music Web’s Live Opera, Concert and Recital Reviews.

Bellini, I Puritani: Seattle Opera, soloists, cond. Edoardo Müller, dir. Linda Brovsky, set designer Robert A. Dahlstrom, costume designer Peter J. Hall, lighting designer Thomas C. Hase, Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, Seattle, 17.5.2008 (BJ)

I Puritani Act I. Photo © 2008 Rozarii Lynch

A spectacular weekend of music theater began for me with this stunning production of my favorite Bellini opera. Speight Jenkins waited until his 25th season as Seattle Opera’s general director before finding a cast that could meet the vocal demands of I Puritani, and the result was clearly worth waiting for, taking its place among the perhaps half-dozen practically flawless evenings I have experienced in the opera house over the past fifty years.

It was not only the singing that thrilled, delighted, and satisfied. On a previous occasion I was mildly critical of Edoardo Müller’s conducting, but this time his leadership was impeccable, and the orchestra played with superb elan and unfailing artistry. Jenkins’s essay in the program observed that “One does not go to Bellini for orchestration or indeed for involved orchestral composition,” which is certainly true of all the composer’s ten earlier operas, but in Puritani a new awakening of instrumental imagination is evident. All the orchestral sections did full justice to the potential of their parts, Mark Robbins’s sumptuous horn obbligato proving especially memorable in the great second-act duet for Giorgio and Riccardo, to which Geoffrey Bergler’s rousing trumpet added visceral excitement. The well-focused work of Beth Kirchhoff’s chorus was equally impressive.

As to Linda Brovsky’s direction, what happened on stage during the overture was already a pleasure to observe. Nothing happened on stage, for Ms Brovsky was content to let the overture play before a black background, unlike those many contemporary directors who have to show us how much cleverer and more creative they are than mere composers and librettists, by arranging all sorts of more or less irrelevant stage business at the point where we should be allowed the luxury of pleasurably waiting for the curtain to rise.

Norah Amsellem (Elvira) Photo © 2008 Rozarii Lynch

And when Robert A. Dahlstrom’s set was duly seen, what an impact it made! An intricate structure, darkly metallic in appearance, on three main levels, it was intersected by a variety of staircases, some wide and some narrow, some straight and some spiral. The effect was a triumph in two principal regards: vividly evoking the atmosphere of Piranesi’s “imaginary prisons,” the set unobtrusively made the point that Cromwell’s Roundheads constituted a repressive and confined society; and while it swarmed with principals and with more than fifty chorus members, it enabled the audience to spot at once every character making an entry on one of the upper levels. Thus in each case we were led to wonder what the new entrant would do, in contrast to the many occasions when, on a single-level stage, we hear the voice of a new character and have to search around to find out where it is coming from. Thomas C. Hase’s subtle lighting reinforced the sense of severity, while yet allowing everything that mattered to be clearly seen, and Peter J. Hall’s costumes, originally designed back in 1976 for the Metropolitan Opera, rang colorful changes on 17th- and 19th-century fashions to match both the English Civil-War period and the music’s romantic style.

Bellini being concerned above all with emotion and its expression through the human voice, all of these elements were ancillary to the main business of the evening–the performances of the four principals and their fellow singers. Thanks to their own talents and no doubt also to Linda Brovsky’s firm directorial hand, I never found myself thinking about any of the performers’ acting. There was none of the usual consciousness that one or other principal was more convincing than his colleagues: everyone simply was the person he was on stage to portray.

Nor, I am happy to report, was there a single weak link in terms of voice quality, technique, or stylistic command in the only one of the two casts that I had the opportunity to see and hear. In the role of Elvira’s uncle Giorgio, John Relyea’s majestic bass-baritone, formidable in sheer size and lustrous in timbre, was paired ideally with the more incisive baritone of Mariusz Kwiecien as Riccardo. As Arturo, Lawrence Brownlee, a most impressive product of Seattle Opera’s Young Artists program, delivered tenor singing of thrilling impact; he was lyrical and heroic in the same breath, fearless in tackling Bellini’s often stratospheric tessitura, and notably accomplished in his Italian diction. But perhaps, aside from enthusiastic praise for Simeon Esper’s Bruno Robertson, Joseph Rawley’s Gualtiero Walton, and Fenlon Lamb’s Enrichetta, the Elvira should be accorded the last word. Alike when she was being sane and when she was being deranged, French soprano Norah Amsellem sang with awe-inspiring virtuosity and touching truth of emotion. Her voice is as lovely as her looks, and she acts well too. As their contributions to this wonderful production brilliantly demonstrated, she and Brownlee are two young singers with already high achievements and golden futures.

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