What a treasure trove of Verdiana for this centenary of the composer’s death! The “rarities” of the title are twofold–the rarely heard and the excellent. The scope is impressive: eight CDs; almost 10 hours of great singing; 136 tracks dating from 1903-54, many in German, French, or Russian, each one worth hearing. Aside from the listening delights, there’s the unintended pleasure all such compilations give: arguing with the choices. Why, for example, include Giuseppe Kaschmann’s “O de’verd’anni miei” from Ernani in preference to Mario Ancona’s equally rare but far superior account? And why not find room for Meta Senemeyer’s hair-raising “Ma dall’arido” from Un Ballo? What’s so rare about Eva Turner’s or Clara Butt’s inferior selections? Do we really need to hear Lola Artôt de Padilla’s Traviata yapping like an ill-tempered lapdog? Oddest of all–the 18-minute Germont/Violetta scene from La Traviata with Rolando Panerei and, of all sopranos the least Verdian imaginable, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf.
But compiler Keith Hardwick, who selected and transferred all of these items for a mid-1980s LP set, writes that they reflect his personal choices within the parameters of his assignment. The guidelines: recordings made up to the early 1950s, with a preference for the EMI catalog. So we’re confined to Golden Age and Silver Age singers, denied Bronze Age greats like Carlo Bergonzi, Jon Vickers, and Maria Callas and singers of the present Plastic Age whose recordings are, alas, all too common.
While I’m making these minor complaints, I should mention that EMI should have redone the transfers. They’re pretty good but not up to the best done by such masters as Ward Marston. Compare, for example, EMI’s version of Emmy Destinn’s 1916 Trovatore “D’amor sull’alli rosee” with Marston’s on Romophone 81002 and you’ll find the latter has more presence and more colors in both voice and orchestra. The booklet is bare-bones too: nary a word about the singers, some of whom are quite obscure. On the plus side, selections are organized by opera rather than recording date, so each disc is a highlights disc.
Even seasoned historical buffs will find recordings new to them or long forgotten. I thrilled to such long-unheard tracks as Margherita Grandi’s chilling “Una macchia” from Macbeth with Beecham’s surprisingly atmospheric conducting, Margarete Klose’s Azucena (in German), Frieda Hempel’s astonishing trill-laden coloratura in a 1909 “Ernani, involami”, Tino Folgar’s sweet-voiced 1927 “La donne mobile”, and “Caro nome” by both Lydia Lipkowska (in Russian and Maria Ivogun (in German). And Hardwick deserves our thanks for including the lengthy but incomparable Filippo/Rodrigo confrontation scene from Don Carlo, with Boris Christoff and Tito Gobbi.
Familiar favorites abound: Kipnis’ “Il lacerato spirito” from Simon Boccanagra, Björling’s Trovatore “Di quella pira”, Pinza and Ponselle in “La vergine degli Angeli” from La Forza, Anselmi’s incomparable “Quando le sere al placido” from Luisa Miller, Destinn’s “O patria mia”, and Tamagno’s “Niun mi tema”, a staple of virtually all historical Verdi surveys, along with selections by Caruso, Plancon, Battistini, and others.
An important virtue of such historical compilations is that they allow today’s listeners easy access to past singing styles such as the transition from the free bel canto style of pre-World War I singers to the modern text-bound style of recent times. For example, the three versions of “Ah fors’ é lui”, all from the first decades of the century, are sung with the opening phrase done without the broken, staccato phrasing we’ve become used to. The rhythmic freedom and elegant phrasing of the earlier singers also is at odds with today’s style, and no one today would dare the excesses of what can only be called “variations on ‘De’ miei bollenti spiriti'” as sung by Fernando de Lucia in 1906. But why waste more words? If you love great singing you need this set. [3/13/2001]
