Reviews for CD 2296-97 Il Barbiere di Siviglia
The very fact that you are unlikely to hear a performance anything like this today is
justification for hearing this one. . . Christopher Howell – MusicWeb
MusicWeb – November 2004
Gioacchino
ROSSINI (1792-1868)
Il Barbiere di Siviglia – comic opera
in two acts (1816) [143:56]
John Charles Thomas (Figaro), Bruno Landi (Almaviva),
Josephine Tuminia (Rosina), Salvatore Boccaloni
(Bartolo), Ezio Pinza (Basilio), Wilfred Engleman
(Fiorello), Irra Petina (Berta), John Dudley
(Officer), Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra/Gennaro
Papi
Recorded live at the Metropolitan Opera House,
New York, 1st March 1941
Friedrich von FLOTOW (1812-1883)
Martha: Il suo sguardo* [4:55],
M’appari [4:15]
Bruno Landi (tenor), Vivian Della Chiesa (soprano)*,
San Francisco Opera Orchestra/Gaetano Merola
From a Standard Hour broadcast, 10th September 1944
GUILD GHCD 2296/97 [76:29 + 76:37]
I’d read about such things, but not heard them. This issue gives us a peep into a lost world of opera production.
Let me explain. Nowadays, when you put on the "Barbiere" and it’s like you get out your
most recent Ricordi edition, carefully revised by Alberto Zedda and, taking your
cue from Claudio Abbado’s classic DG recording, you pay scrupulous attention to
every detail of the text, performing the music with elegance, refinement,
vitality and a certain basic seriousness. Just as if it was by Mozart, in short.
Sixty years ago the score (unrevised) was a peg for a theatrical show. It’s not just a
question of cuts, though these become increasingly ferocious as the opera goes
on, so that in the latter half of Act 2 we get not so much a performance as a
whistle-stop tour. Against these are to be weighed frequent added lines,
particularly by Baccaloni as Bartolo who ends most of his lines with a leering "eeeeh!",
mimics Rosina’s lines before actually replying to them and generally keeps up a
sort of muttered commentary while others are singing their parts. But if
Baccaloni is an extreme example, the others are not far behind. Whether these
are personal gags on the part of the individual singers, or traditional
accretions, I don’t know, but I am sure the basic practice was normal at the
time.
And then the notes themselves of the recitatives are scarcely respected. Entire sections
are actually done as dialog, and in others the singing is a kind of Sprechstimme
reminding us of Noel Coward or even of Rex Harrison’s performance in "My Fair
Lady" which succeeded in raising "non-singing" almost to a noble art. But "My Fair Lady" wasn’t an opera. Furthermore, this style of comic non-singing even
continues in the ensembles, much of the finale of Act One being resolved as
semi-pitched "parlando".
One other "liberty" was traditional at the time; when Rosina has her singing lesson the
music she takes out of her portfolio is not the aria Rossini wrote for inclusion
at this point but Proch’s "Deh torna mio bene". This lends unusual point to
Bartolo’s comment that "the aria, all things considered, was pretty boring;
music was something else in my days".
So where does this leave us?
The set is claimed as valuable above all for Baccaloni and Pinza. As a theatrical
performance Baccaloni must have been terrific – the public rock with laughter
whenever he’s on stage. The voice is a firm and authoritative one though the
singing as such – not that there is much – does not seem particularly
remarkable. Pinza certainly was a great singer with a great voice and his
account of "La Calunnia" is both histrionic and musical. It is perhaps
the finest I have heard and rightly brings the house down. But, apart from this,
Basilio does not have all that much to do in this opera.
John Charles Thomas (1891-1960) was a Met stalwart, much appreciated as Germont and
Amonasro. He is thoroughly at home in Italian and gives a comic pantomime
performance along similar lines to Baccaloni’s. The voice itself seems a bit
rough and cavernous.
Bruno Landi (?1905-1968) was a genuine "tenore di grazia" with a sweet, honeyed line
in lyrical passages and untroubled high notes (as we also hear in the Flotow
extracts). Had he been born a generation or so later when the Rossini-Donizetti
revival was in full swing his early training would have included agility too; as
it is he pecks around the edges of many passages where modern ears demand
accuracy.
Today’s taste prefers a mezzo Rosina, though since Rossini provided variants and
transpositions for a soprano Rosina we cannot actually say the latter is
inauthentic. A soprano Rosina is better suited to the essentially frivolous
conception of the opera current at the time and the Italo-American Josephine
Tuminia has a bright and shallow soubrettish voice with easy coloratura and an
ability to hold top Cs and Ds almost indefinitely. In its way it’s an attractive
assumption of the role but others have given so much more and Tuminia, having
sung Gilda and Rosina over two seasons, was not called back to the Met. Irra Petina
is a caricatural Berta.
The conductor Gennaro Papi was an old hand at the Met and his rough and tumble
approach suits the pantomime conception well enough. Besides, it would have
taken a Toscanini to impose order on his principals and insist on observance of
the score, though the Leinsdorf recording of a decade or so later shows that the
Met Barber Show, if still not quite embracing authenticity, was to get a
beneficial spring-cleaning.
Two things have to be said, though. The first is that this performance does enshrine an
approach to the business of performing a comic opera the roots of which, if not
the substance, go back to Rossini’s own days. In other words, he might have been
sarcastic about some of the ways in which his notes were being treated but he
might not have disowned the general style. The other is that people maybe
enjoyed their evening at the opera much more than we do today. The Met public
plainly never have a dull moment. This is a point to be weighed against the
serious refinement of an Abbado. All the same, it belongs to an epoch when
Rossini was patronised as the composer of a few good tunes rather than a musical
dramatist not so far behind Mozart and deserving of the same respect. Still, the
very fact that you are unlikely to hear a performance anything like this today
is justification for hearing this one. The recording catches the voices
reasonably well and is really remarkably good for what it is. The less said
about the soprano in the Flotow duet the better and in Guild’s place I’d have
issued only the aria.
The booklet, like others in this series, has a detailed essay and
mini-biographies of the singers and conductor. It’s a pity they manage to spell
Rossini’s name wrongly ("Giaocchini"!) twice over, on the back cover and under
his portrait, but there is a mystery to clear up since both the Concise
Grove and the Italian Garzanti encyclopedia spell it "Gioachino" while the
Ricordi score prefers "Gioacchino". The double C is normal in modern Italian
(the name is equivalent to the German "Joachim") but was not so in Rossini’s own
days.
Christopher Howell
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