The Sixteen continues its exploration of Henry Purcell’s Welcome Songs for Charles II. As with Robert King’s pioneering Purcell series begun over thirty years ago for Hyperion, Harry Christophers is recording two Welcome Songs per disc.
In February this year, Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho made a highly lauded debut recital at Wigmore Hall - a concert which both celebrated Opera Rara’s 50th anniversary and honoured the career of the Italian soprano Rosina Storchio (1872-1945), the star of verismo who created the title roles in Leoncavallo’s La bohème and Zazà, Mascagni’s Lodoletta and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
Collapsology. Or, perhaps we should use the French word ‘Collapsologie’ because this is a transdisciplinary idea pretty much advocated by a series of French theorists - and apparently, mostly French theorists. It in essence focuses on the imminent collapse of modern society and all its layers - a series of escalating crises on a global scale: environmental, economic, geopolitical, governmental; the list is extensive.
Amongst an avalanche of new Mahler recordings appearing at the moment (Das Lied von der Erde seems to be the most favoured, with three) this 1991 Mahler Second from the 2nd Kassel MahlerFest is one of the more interesting releases.
If there is one myth, it seems believed by some people today, that probably needs shattering it is that post-war recordings or performances of Wagner operas were always of exceptional quality. This 1949 Hamburg Tristan und Isolde is one of those recordings - though quite who is to blame for its many problems takes quite some unearthing.
The voices of six women composers are celebrated by baritone Jeremy Huw Williams and soprano Yunah Lee on this characteristically ambitious and valuable release by Lontano Records Ltd (Lorelt).
As Paul Spicer, conductor of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir, observes, the worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary is as ‘old as Christianity itself’, and programmes devoted to settings of texts which venerate the Virgin Mary are commonplace.
Ethel Smyth’s last large-scale work, written in 1930 by the then 72-year-old composer who was increasingly afflicted and depressed by her worsening deafness, was The Prison – a ‘symphony’ for soprano and bass-baritone soloists, chorus and orchestra.
‘Hamilton Harty is Irish to the core, but he is not a musical nationalist.’
‘After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music.’ Aldous Huxley’s words have inspired VOCES8’s new disc, After Silence, a ‘double album in four chapters’ which marks the ensemble’s 15th anniversary.
A song-cycle is a narrative, a journey, not necessarily literal or linear, but one which carries performer and listener through time and across an emotional terrain. Through complement and contrast, poetry and music crystallise diverse sentiments and somehow cohere variability into an aesthetic unity.
One of the nicest things about being lucky enough to enjoy opera, music and theatre, week in week out, in London’s fringe theatres, music conservatoires, and international concert halls and opera houses, is the opportunity to encounter striking performances by young talented musicians and then watch with pleasure as they fulfil those sparks of promise.
“It’s forbidden, and where’s the art in that?”
Dublin-born John F. Larchet (1884-1967) might well be described as the father of post-Independence Irish music, given the immense influenced that he had upon Irish musical life during the first half of the 20th century - as a composer, musician, administrator and teacher.
The English Civil War is raging. The daughter of a Puritan aristocrat has fallen in love with the son of a Royalist supporter of the House of Stuart. Will love triumph over political expediency and religious dogma?
Beethoven Symphony no 9 (the Choral Symphony) in D minor, Op. 125, and the Choral Fantasy in C minor, Op. 80 with soloist Kristian Bezuidenhout, Pablo Heras-Casado conducting the Freiburger Barockorchester, new from Harmonia Mundi.
A Louise Brooks look-a-like, in bobbed black wig and floor-sweeping leather trench-coat, cheeks purple-rouged and eyes shadowed in black, Barbara Hannigan issues taut gestures which elicit fire-cracker punch from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
‘Signor Piatti in a fantasia on themes from Beatrice di Tenda had also his triumph. Difficulties, declared to be insuperable, were vanquished by him with consummate skill and precision. He certainly is amazing, his tone magnificent, and his style excellent. His resources appear to be inexhaustible; and altogether for variety, it is the greatest specimen of violoncello playing that has been heard in this country.’
Baritone Roderick Williams seems to have been a pretty constant ‘companion’, on my laptop screen and through my stereo speakers, during the past few ‘lock-down’ months.
Melodramas can be a difficult genre for composers. Before Richard Strauss’s Enoch Arden the concept of the melodrama was its compact size – Weber’s Wolf’s Glen scene in Der Freischütz, Georg Benda’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Medea or even Leonore’s grave scene in Beethoven’s Fidelio.
There have to be special reasons to release a monophonic live recording of a much-recorded opera. Often it can give us the opportunity to hear a singer in a major role that he or she never recorded commercially—or did record on some later occasion, when the voice was no longer fresh. Often a live recording catches the dramatic flow better than certain studio recordings that may be more perfect technically.
Both of these reasons apply to the recording here, from a performance at Covent Garden on May 18, 1961. We get to hear Régine Crespin singing a role that she never recorded commercially, and at the peak of her vocal voluptuousness and steadiness. She was Mme. Lidoine (the new Prioress) in the first recording of Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites (1958). In the early 1960s she made a still-classic recording of Berlioz's Les Nuits d'été and Ravel's Shéhérazade and contributed a magnificent Sieglinde to the Solti/Culshaw Ring Cycle.
What we get here is, as we had reason to hope, an immensely artful blending of vocal plenitude, nuanced phrasing and dynamics, and alert moment-to-moment clarity of characterization. Crespin now leaps to the top of recorded Floria Toscas, next to my, and many people's, two favorites: Maria Callas (the mono recording, conducted by De Sabata) and Leontyne Price (two great recordings: with Karajan and with Mehta).
The Cavaradossi, Giuseppe Di Stefano, sounds very involved in certain solo moments but distracted or routine in interaction with other characters. The voice is wonderfully sweet at times, but it can become tight—almost like a comical “character tenor” (e.g., the landlord Benoît in La Bohème)—when it has to contend with a full orchestra.
Much more convincing is the Scarpia of Czech-born Otakar Kraus. The voice is well controlled and used to good dramatic point. Kraus's burly singing over the chorus and orchestra at the end of Act 1 is stunning and scary, and the singer shows his ability to be manipulatively lyrical in his negotiation with the diva in Act 2. This Kraus (not to be confused with tenor Alfredo) recorded very little. He is not so much as mentioned in the Metropolitan Opera Guide to Recorded Opera. He sang the roles of Nick Shadow in the first production of The Rake's Progress and of Tarquinius in the first Rape of Lucretia. That first (live) Rake is available on CD, but reportedly the performance as a whole is somewhat helter-skelter and the sound quality pale. Is there more Otakar Kraus in the archives and decently recorded?
The conducting is first-rate: brisk but always ready to bend to make a point. The Covent Garden orchestra is ultra-responsive, with only a few momentary slips in intonation. The clarinet introduction to “E lucevan le stelle” is done in the modern international manner: vibrato-free and eloquent. The conductor, by the way, is not the Edward O. D. Downes who used to host the Metropolitan Opera Quiz. This Edward Downes was English-born and renowned as a Verdi conductor; he rose to become Associate Music Director of Covent Garden and Principal Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic.
The booklet contains only a tracklist and an apology for imperfections in the original tapes. My ears found nothing to complain of, beyond the predictable limitations in a mono recording of a complex opera. Indeed, offstage sound effects generally register well and in good balance with the onstage singing and the playing from the pit. My one complaint: very soft singing is occasionally covered by the orchestra.
Perhaps several mikes were used and artfully mixed at the moment of recording? Was this performance originally broadcast on the radio? I wish that certain record companies would reveal a little more about the origins of their archival releases. YouTube has a recording of the same opera made four years later with the same soprano and tenor, but with a marvelous Giuseppe Taddei as Scarpia (though a bit weak on the low end), from the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, under Bruno Bartoletti.
Crespin still sounds vital and detailed; Di Stefano’s voice is in further decline. The winds are often out of tune with each other, and the recording lacks the opening minutes. YouTube also has several recordings of Crespin singing “Vissi d’arte” (including a made-for-TV video), and a video in which Crespin enjoys retelling (in French) two different mishaps in the scene in Act 2 where she needs to grab a knife and murder Scarpia.Ralph P. Locke
Ralph P. Locke is emeritus professor of musicology at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. He has written extensively on opera and symphonic music and on the relationships between music and society. His most recent two books are Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections and Music and the Exotic from the Renaissance to Mozart (both Cambridge University Press).
The above review is a lightly revised version of one that first appeared in American Record Guide and appears here by kind permission.