Il Corsaro is one of Verdi’s weakest operas, with uni-dimensional characters and scene following scene in a lackluster fashion–but oddly, if you listen to it piece by piece, you’ll discover some exciting, blood-boiling music, written more than sympathetically and interestingly for the voice. The raison d’être of this release is soprano Pauline Tinsley, a remarkable British singer who was very sparsely recorded. Her voice was large and secure, not particularly luscious or pretty but very expressive, and her musicianship and vocal acting were second to none.
Here she sings Gulnara, one of the two soprano roles (the Philips recording of the work, still the preferred version, has Caballé in her role and Jessye Norman as the other soprano). Gulnara loves the pirate Corrado but is imprisoned by the Pasha Seid whom she eventually kills. Tinsley is superb, handling Verdi’s high-lying, sometimes florid music with ease and creating as much of a character as anyone can out of so little dramatic material.
The rest of the cast is unknown outside of Great Britain, but they’re all very good. Patricia McCarry, the other soprano, has a lighter, prettier sound and makes the most of the fragile Medora, Corrado’s other love interest, and Terence Sharpe’s baritone is impressive and expressively used as Seid. As Corrado, tenor Keith Erwin, without a very Italianate sound, is excellent. In fact, despite the unknown names and non-Italianate cast and conductor, this live performance, from London in 1971, has a great deal of fire and plenty to recommend it.
As a bonus, we get tracks of Tinsley singing arias from Nabucco, Euryanthe, Pirata, and Macbeth–some of the heaviest music written for soprano–and she is riveting in each portrayal. Indeed, her singing of Lady Macbeth’s “La luce langue” is the most hair-raising I’ve ever heard. Despite its oddnesses, this inexpensive set is recommended.
