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Home , Alzira (opera), Gianandrea Gavazzeni, Julian Budden, La Fenice, Leyla Gencer, Simon Boccanegra

(review) Karen Henson

The Quarterly, Volume 18, Number 1, Winter 2002, pp. 124-125 (Review)

Published by Oxford University Press

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/25476

[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] 124 recordings translation—has ever been performed in that language? The last page of the booklet provides the welcome news that Philips has recorded, for release during 2001, and . Luisi is again the conductor, for both works, and the casts look promising: for Alzira, Mescheriakova, Ramón Vargas, and Paolo Gavanelli; for Aroldo, Neil SchicoV, Carol Vaness, Anthony Michaels- Moore, and Scandiuzzi. Now, of course, we need studio recordings of Les vêpres siciliennes and the original, uncut (1867) French . . . how about it, Philips? Roland Graeme note

1. , The of Verdi, vol. 1 (London: Cassell, 1973), p. 359.

Simon Boccanegra (1857 version).

Simon Boccanegra: Vittorio Vitelli Orchestra Internazionale d’Italia Jacopo Fiesco: Francesco Ellero D’Artegna Bratislava Chamber Choir Amelia: Annalisa Raspagliosi Choir of the Teatro Petruzzelli, Bari Gabriele Adorno: Warren Mok Renato Palumbo, conductor Paolo Albiani: Nikola Mijailovic Dynamic (distributed by Qualiton Imports) Pietro: Massimiliano Chiarolla CDS 268/1-2 (2 CDs) Maidservant: Songhu Liu

This is the first commercial recording of the original 1857 Simon Boccanegra—a work that enjoyed little success at its premiere at and in the years immediately following, and was eVectively withdrawn by Verdi until the late 1870s, when he revised it as a kind of trial run for his collaboration with the librettist of and , . As such, it is a unique document, and one that ought to have a place on any serious Verdi-lover’s shelf; but per- haps the more important question is whether there is a great deal musically to be gained from the purchase. The revised 1881 Boccanegra is a stunningly com- plex work, one that might appeal especially strongly to modern sensibilities. No less than six recordings of it have recently been released, which, even allow- ing for the Verdi centenary, suggests a new appreciation of its - and -dominated austerity and moments of lush, fin-de-siècle tone painting.1 Even before this recent interest, the discography for the revised Boccanegra was impressive, with contributions by Abbado (twice), Santini, and Solti and, so far as principals are concerned, Bruson, Gobbi, Nucci; ChristoV and Ghiau- rov; Freni and de los Angeles; and Aragall, Carreras, and Domingo. With a cast of relative obscurities and a score shorn of much that has made it popular, Renato Palumbo and the Orchestra Internazionale d’Italia cannot hope to compete, though they do at times make good use of their assets. One of the most noticeable strengths of the first Boccanegra is its greater consistency r ecordings 125 of musical “tone”; and this is reflected by Palumbo in generally more stan- dardized and tauter tempi, some of which could usefully be carried over into the 1881 version. This applies particularly to the Boccanegra-Fiesco duet in the final act, which in seminal recordings like Santini’s (1957, with Gobbi in the title role) is treated with an almost self-indulgent attention to the individual moment. While this may help to balance the scene with the weighty close of act 1 (the so-called Council Chamber Scene, one of Verdi’s and Boito’s most important additions to the work), Vittorio Vitelli’s and Francesco Ellero D’Artegna’s more energetic performance reminds us that there are alternatives, ones that lead with greater goal-directedness to the revelation of the heroine’s identity (and that allow for any interpretative detail and melodrama to be focused on the very end of the opera). Neither Vitelli nor Ellero D’Artegna in fact seem especially suited to their roles, though their diVering vocal colors—Vitelli youthful and rather mono- chromatic, Ellero D’Artegna grey and covered—work well in this last duet, the contrast taking us back to where the drama began, to the very personal busi- ness of a conflict between a father and a lover. Warren Mok as Gabriele seems more appropriately cast, as does Annalisa Raspagliosi as Amelia—after Boc- canegra, arguably the most interesting role when it comes to the diVerences between the two versions. The 1881 Amelia is the source of much music that we now revere (one thinks above all of the act 1 prelude and associated cavatina, “Come in quest’ora bruna”); and, on first hearing, the same aria, separated from its scintillating accompaniment and paired with a full-scale , seems a poor alternative. What gradually emerged for me, though, is that if the 1881 Amelia is clothed in orchestral lustrousness, the earlier heroine has her own, more purely vocal force (one that may have partly been inspired by the role’s creator, the di forza Luigia Bendazzi). As with the 1857 opera as a whole, then, there are reasons why we might want to hear her. Karen Henson note

1. Some of these recordings are re-masterings: see and the Philharmonic (with and ), Gala 100508 (orig. 1961); Héctor Panizza and the Orchestra and Chorus (with and ), Arkadia ga2030 (orig. 1939); Giuseppe Patanè and the Hungarian Opera Orches- tra and Chorus, Hungaroton hun12522; Alexander Rahbari and the Belgian National Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, Discover International dicd9202256; Mario Rossi and the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro San Carlo, (with Gobbi and Gencer), Hardy Classic 6002 (orig. 1958); and Michelangelo Veltri and the Marseilles Opera Orchestra and Chorus (with José van Dam), Lyrinx lyr127128129.