This set commemorating Leonard Warren’s vocal legacy is both a welcome remembrance of past glories and a painful reminder that we’re now sadly bereft of top-level baritones in the Italian repertoire. With its penetrating, ringing top and immaculate diction, Warren’s big, velvet-encased voice was made for Verdi. A late bloomer, by the mid-1940s he supplanted Lawrence Tibbett as the Met’s “house” baritone and remained at the top until his tragic onstage death in 1960 at only 48. This lavish tribute produced by the Leonard Warren Foundation includes two CDs, one of operatic arias, the other of popular concert fare, and a generous 100-plus page booklet with bio, discographic documentation, photos, and full texts and translations.
There’s some marvelous singing on these discs. Dapertutto’s aria, “Scintille, diamant!” from Tales of Hoffman is a case in point. With its spectacular G-sharp climax, Warren’s version has long been admired as a recording classic. His 1947 “Il balen” from Trovatore is a stunning lesson in legato singing, and the 1959 “Pietá, rispetto, amore” from Macbeth, its opening phrase taken in one endless breath, is another. Here and throughout the set, Warren displays a subtle rubato that keeps the singing line alive. Never calling attention to itself and allied to an emotion-laden voice, it makes something special of arias such as “Nemico della patria” from Andrea Chénier and “Eri tu” from Un Ballo. Surprisingly, the disc of concert arrangements of folk songs, sea chanties, and the like, has some of the finest singing of the set. Every word is crystal-clear, the well-supported voice effortlessly floats on a column of air, and the well-timed rubatos and elegant phrasing turn almost all of these songs into an unforgettable vocal experience. In part, it’s because Warren eschews the songs’ inherent sentimentality. Even such tired staples as “Home on the Range”, “Shenandoah”, and the nausea-inducing “Danny Boy” and “Mother Machree” are transformed into sparkling gems.
It’s not all gold though. Warren’s low notes weren’t his voice’s best feature, the patter in “Largo al factotum” from Barber of Seville lumbers, and Bizet’s “Agnus Dei” is overwhelmed by Warren’s muscular singing. But these are minor flaws in an outstanding set–well-transferred by Seth Winner–that should not be missed by any lover of great singing.
