Venice’s Teatro la Fenice has seen better nights than December 15, 1968, when it staged this performance of Cherubini’s Medea, complete with traditional cuts. As heard in Gala’s muffled sound, with tubby bass and frequent distortion in climaxes, this is a routine, provincial performance whose appeal will be limited to fans of Leyla Gencer, the outstanding Turkish soprano, caught here on an off-night well past her prime, the top often sounding squeezed and wobbly, the middle hollow, the bottom strained, the register breaks writ large. Throw in a touch of hoarseness, at least as recorded here, and even the intensity of her assumption of the role of the jealousy-crazed mother prepared to kill her two children to spite their father isn’t enough to attract any but the most rabid Gencer loyalists. The tired conducting and amateurish orchestra help not at all, and of the mediocre supporting cast only the Creonte, Ruggero Raimondi, who must have wondered how he got into this mess, is worth hearing. The tenor lead, Aldo Bottion, isn’t even mentioned in the booklet’s potted bios of the principals, perhaps a subtle critical commentary on Gala’s part.
A sense of what might have been is the substantial filler, 25 minutes of Act 2 excerpts from a 1972 Vienna State Opera Medea in very acceptable sound featuring Leonie Rysanek, singing with passion, making you want to hear the whole performance. The Giasone is Bruno Prevedi, and Margaret Lilowa is an excellent Neris. Horst Stein conducts, and from the very first notes of these excerpts–the lovely bassoon solo introducing Neris’ “Solo un pianto”–the first-class orchestra shames its canal-logged Venice counterpart. The above rating applies to the main event; the filler gets 8/5. For Medea, any one of Callas’ several versions takes precedence, the one on EMI being the most readily available.
