What’s right about this 1976 live recording of Nino Rota’s most popular opera? First, the music itself. Il cappello di paglia di Firenze (The Florentine Straw Hat) is based on the classic French farce The Italian Straw Hat by Labiche and Michel, and it may be the best pure opera buffa since the death of Donizetti. It has the sparkle of Rossini, the sassiness of Prokofiev, and the wit of Poulenc. (The plot: Fadinard, a nervous bridegroom, takes a ride in the park the morning of the nuptials. His horse finds a straw hat and starts to eat it. It belongs to a young married woman who is trysting in the park with her military officer lover. Fadinard must find a match for the hat–else fight a duel with the officer–all the while fending off the suspicions of his bride’s father.)
Second, the conductor. Elio Boncompagni leads a breezy performance that is better paced than the composer’s own RCA Italiana studio recording of 1975 (a recording made to be the soundtrack of an RAI-TV production). Most notably, lyrical portions are sung with more expression, and the broadest moments of farce are supported with bouncier, more alert rhythms.
Third, the cast. These are experienced members of the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels and they work together well. In a live setting, their comic timing is sharper. The titular star is mezzo Magda Olivero, who would have stolen the show were her role not confined to one act.
What’s wrong about this recording? Everything else. This “unathorized” recording doesn’t have the sonic benefit of having come from a professionally made tape–or even an FM or TV air-check. Instead, it seems to have been recorded on a single microphone held somewhere in the audience. The sound is boxy and constricted, and you can hear the individual handclaps and throat-clearings of five or six nearby audience members. The orchestra is scrawny, scrappy, and sour. And the antics on stage create loud thumps and bumps throughout. We’re given only a slim outline of the plot–no libretto in any language is included. It is a tribute to Boncompagni and the cast that there’s actually enough entertainment value to justify enduring the sound–and then only following some playback tweaking.
