Licia Albanese was the Met’s house soprano in Italian opera, an audience favorite for 26 years beginning in 1940. She was then still on the sunny side of 30 and already a big success in Italy, where she partnered Gigli on recordings and at La Scala. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s she was the Met’s reigning Puccini soprano, singing Madama Butterfly 72 times. So it’s fitting that nearly half of this disc is devoted to Puccini arias from Manon Lescaut, La Boheme, and five selections from Butterfly. Her Traviata (87 Met appearances) drew raves, substantiated here by Violetta’s big first-act scene, which she sings with passion, vocal color, diction that makes every word a model of clarity, and a marvelous blending of vocal accuracy and word coloring that captures emotions and character. Others may have made more of the coloratura passages, but that’s neither here nor there in the context of a gripping performance. Her “Addio del passato” also is intensely sung, fully conveying the pathos of the scene.
Everything on this generously filled disc (78 minutes) was recorded between 1945 and 1950 when Albanese was in her vocal prime. The voice is suffused with color and has the size to encompass the verismo arias, where she excels in La Wally’s “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana” and those from “Cav” and “Pag”, Mefistofele, and Adriana Lecouvreur. But I miss the idiomatic French style in the arias from Massenet’s Herodiade and Charpentier’s Louise. In the latter’s “Depuis le jour” her voice fails to suggest the youth of the eponymous protagonist–but then Albanese always (even when young) sounded a good deal older than young characters like Mimi and Butterfly, which didn’t dim her achievements in those roles.
The orchestral accompaniments are a cut above what we usually get from studio sessions for 78 rpm releases of the period, and Preiser’s transfers are good. Albanese was overshadowed in her day by the likes of Milanov, Callas, and Tebaldi, among others. But she was a first-rate singer and artist and deserves greater recognition than she currently enjoys. Here’s hoping that this release helps bring her to the attention of a new generation of opera buffs. [4/15/2004]
