LEONCAVALLO Pagliacci IA CAL AR LA M S 1 954 Recording Maria Callas • Giuseppe Di Stefano • Tito Gobbi Rolando Panerai • Nicola Monti Chorus and Orchestra of La Scala, Milan Tullio Serafin Great Opera Recordings Ruggero LEONCAVALLO (1858 – 1919) Pagliacci Libretto by the composer Canio . Giuseppe Di Stefano (tenor) Nedda . Maria Callas (soprano) Tonio . Tito Gobbi (baritone) Silvio . Rolando Panerai (baritone) Beppe . Nicola Monti (tenor) Chorus and Orchestra of Teatro alla Scala, Mila Vittore Veneziani, Chorus master Tullio Serafin Recorded 12th – 17th June, 1954 at Teatro alla Scala, Milan First issued on Columbia 33CX 1211 and 1212 Reissue Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn Producer’s Note The primary source for the present transfer was a set of original-issue British LP pressings supplemented by a German LP set. The wide frequency range and excellent balance of the original tapes were marred by only a few inherent problems, some of which I was able to correct (like the slight volume jump in the word “lurido” at the end of Nedda’s scene with Tonio) and others which could not be fixed (like the brief dropout in the master tape toward the end of Nedda’s ballatella). Overall, however, this was one of the EMI engineers’ finest studio efforts among the early Callas opera recordings. Mark Obert-Thorn 8.111024 2 Prologue $ E allor perché, di’, tu m’hai stregato 3:34 1 Si può? Si può? 7:48 (Silvio, Nedda) (Tonio) % Cammina adagio e li sorprenderai 4:43 Act I (Tonio, Silvio, Nedda, Canio, Beppe) 2 Eh! … Son quà! Son quà! 3:12 (Chorus, Canio, Beppe) ^ Recitar! Mentre preso dal delirio 0:46 (Canio) 3 Un grande spettacolo a ventitré ore 2:46 (Canio, Chorus, Tonio, Villagers, Beppe) & Vesti la giubba 2:37 (Canio) 4 Un tal gioco, credetemi 2:48 (Canio, Nedda, Chorus) * Intermezzo 3:17 (Orchestra) 5 I zampognari! I zampognari! 1:28 (Boys, Men, Old People, Women, Canio) Act II ( Ohè! Ohè! Presto 4:09 6 Don, Din, Don, Din 2:30 (Chorus, Tonio) (Chorus) La Commedia 7 Qual fiamma avea nel guardo 2:24 ) Pagliaccio, mio marito 1:52 (Nedda) (Nedda) 8 Stridono lassù, liberamente 2:14 ¡ Ah! Columbina, il tenero 2:13 (Nedda) (Beppe, Nedda) 9 Sei là! Credea che te ne fossi andato 0:53 ™ È dessa! Dei, come è bella! 3:41 (Nedda, Tonio) (Tonio, Chorus, Nedda, Beppe) 0 So ben che lo scemo, contorto son io 4:07 £ Arlecchin! … Colombina! 2:33 (Nedda, Tonio) (Nedda, Beppe, Tonio, Canio) ! Nedda! … Silvio! A quest’ora che imprudenza! ¢ Un uomo era con te 1:55 (Silvio, Nedda) 1:23 (Canio, Nedda, Chorus, Tonio) @ E fra quest’ansie in eterno vivrai 2:37 ∞ No, Pagliaccio non son 4:14 (Silvio, Nedda) (Canio, Chorus, Silvio, Nedda) # Non mi tentar! 1:22 § No, per mia madre! Indegna esser poss’io 1:43 (Nedda, Silvio, Tonio) (Nedda, Beppe, Tonio, Canio, Silvio, Chorus) 3 8.111024 Ruggero Leoncavallo (1858 -1919) Pagliacci This recording of Pagliacci was made by EMI at La needs a soubrette more in the operetta style. Scala, Milan in June 1954, some eight months after It seems appropriate therefore that Callas’s figure Cavalleria rusticana, and first published in April 1955 should so radically have changed in the period in Britain by Columbia and in the United States by separating the recordings. In August 1953, at the time Angel. Callas’s Nedda in Pagliacci was the fifth Cavalleria rusticana was made, she was as Biki, the complete recording she took part in under the aegis of Milanese couturier, remembers: ‘fat, clumsy and badly La Scala, although she did not sing it on stage, either dressed: she wore some extraordinary plastic earrings’. there or anywhere else. Made eight months after By the following summer she had lost some sixty Cavalleria rusticana, at the time Walter Legge, EMI’s pounds, becoming chic and svelte - even her hair had record producer, carried away by the sensational become blonde. Just as she had slimmed and her success that January of a new production of Lucia di appearance changed, so inevitably her voice too had Lammermoor directed and conducted by Karajan, with become thinner, less steady, and harder in tone; it had the newly slimmed Callas, determined to secure them to begun to lose the bloom of youth, as if a veneer had record an opera together. Since, unfortunately, Callas been wiped off it. But this may seem not inappropriate had already recorded Lucia, he offered Pagliacci for Nedda, who in duet with Tonio one minute is instead, but Karajan declined. shrewishly chiding him: ‘Eh! Dite maestro Tonio! La Pagliacci, first performed at the Dal Verme, Milan schiena oggi vi prude’ [‘Tell me master Tonio, have in 1892, was conducted by the 24-year-old Arturo you an itching back… ], then the next minute coyly Toscanini; the cast included Fiorello Giraud [Canio], turning to Silvio, ‘a questa’ora che imprudenza’ [‘how Adelina Stehle [Nedda] and Victor Maurel [Tonio]. The rash at this hour’]. In the Act II commedia dell’arte great French baritone Maurel, creator of Iago and scene, she demonstrates her musical skill, not just by Falstaff, regarded by Verdi as one of the greatest changing the colour of her voice, but so responsive is it singing actors, persuaded Leoncavallo to let Tonio, not it hardly needs any support. We can almost see her Canio, have the last words: ‘la commedia è finita’ [‘the Colombina delicately tripping the measures of the play is over’]. Since the story is a play within a play, minuet; then, in response to Pagliaccio becoming the and Tonio introduces the opera with the prologue, it enraged Canio, and his insistent demand that she seems more fitting to finish it with Tonio. Canio has identify her lover, how vividly she turns into Nedda the been interpreted by many famous tenors since the time termagant; there’s no need to have to understand a word of Caruso [his most popular rôle at the Metropolitan]. of Italian, so effectively does she create the character Not only is it effective vocally but it is also ideal for a through the music. mature seasoned artist; Gigli and Domingo both over No soprano, records suggest, could have been less sixty were still giving memorable impersonations. Both like Callas than Augusta Oltrabella [1897-1981]; a also undertook Turiddu in Cavalleria rusticana in a noted Italian lyric-dramatic soprano of the verismo double bill; Gigli did so at his farewell in 1954 when he school. Although Oltrabella may not have meant it as a was 64. Rarely, however, do famous sopranos sing both compliment, she puts her finger on precisely what Santuzza and Nedda sequentially [although Victoria de makes Callas so exceptional. ‘Verismo was not for her los Angeles did so on once at a Covent Garden gala]; because, despite what everyone says, she was an actress Santuzza calls for a more dramatic voice, while Nedda in the expression of the music … [and] in verismo the 8.111024 4 music is often secondary.’ Indeed, it was Callas’s few years his repertory embraced Germont in La prodigious musical skill that makes her unique, not her traviata, Silvio in Pagliacci, Lescaut, Marcello in La looks, her acting, or Onassis. She was, indeed still is on Bohème, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly, Ford in records, unique not only because of her voice, which at Falstaff, De Siriex in Fedora, Baldassare in Cilea’s its best was a characteristic sounding instrument; but L’Arlesiana and Michonnet in Adriana Lecouvreur, and her musicianship, allied to a consummate singing he also sang Melot in Wagner’s Tristano and Gunther in technique, enabled her to encompass a rich and varied Il crepuscolo degli dei, Jochanaan in Strauss’s Salome repertory. As we can hear on any of her best recordings, and Wozzeck, as well as a sizeable repertory of then which are now coming into the public domain. modern operas. His international career began after Giuseppe Di Stefano, born in 1921 near Catania, World War II at leading theatres throughout the opera Sicily, had a brilliant but short career. His was one of world, undertaking many of what were then famous the most beautiful lyric tenor voices of the last century. impersonations, including Rigoletto, Posa, Iago, He began singing light music then, following a brief Renato, Macbeth, Nabucco, Simon Boccanegra, Rance period of study with the baritone Luigi Montesanto, in La fanciulla del west, Scarpia, Falstaff and Michele made his opera début in 1946 as Des Grieux in in Il tabarro and Gianni Schicchi, both of which he sang Massenet’s Manon at Reggio Emilia, after which his on more than one occasion the same evening. In older rise to fame was rapid. In 1947 he appeared at La Scala, music, as Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia or Don Milan, also as Des Grieux, and in 1948 at the Giovanni, which he appeared in at Salzburg under Metropolitan, New York, as the Duke in Rigoletto. At Furtwängler in 1950, although his stage presence was first his repertory included Fenton in Falstaff, Almaviva imposing, his recordings reveal his singing was not in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi, stylish. Over the years inevitably his voice became less Alfredo in La Traviata and Faust, but it did not take responsive and in the upper range not infrequently he long before he began undertaking heavier rôles, such as sang flat. As more than twenty films he made show, he Cavaradossi, Don José in Carmen, Radames in Aida, was a good-looking man with considerable histrionic Canio in Pagliacci and even Alvaro in La forza del skill.