Some boilerplate first, just in case you’re new to Decca’s The Singers series. Each disc is housed in an attractive cardboard cover–goodbye and good riddance, jewel case. All have sketchy print booklets: pictures, texts, and translations are relegated to cyberspace–i.e., you need to load the discs into your computer if you want to follow the texts while you listen. Each recording features a singer worthy of a single-disc “best of” presentation. On most of the discs, the chosen aria and song selections are, to be charitable, idiosyncratic, and some are downright hare-brained. Many of the discs also spend an inordinate amount of space on recordings made when the subject was well past his/her prime.
What about the Tebaldi offering? Sadly, it exhibits most of the above-mentioned faults, tempered by some really outstanding selections such as the three arias drawn from her first Decca recording session in 1949. The opening track, from Gounod’s Faust, features Marguerite’s “King of Thule” aria and the “Jewel Song”, the latter bereft of trills, apparently the one flaw in her vast vocal arsenal. They’re sung in Italian and aren’t very idiomatic, but the voice is irresistible, verdantly youthful, and fresh. Manon Lescaut’s “In quelle trine morbide” is a virtual lesson in Puccini singing, and the other Puccini arias are as fetching. The trouble begins after track five, with a Gluck aria from Paride ed Elena that was made in 1974, by which time Tebaldi was vocally on the ropes. She sings it, and the other 18th century selections, with some discomfort and a blissful innocence of anything approaching the proper style: forget period authenticity; this is grossly anachronistic even by the standards of the 1960s.
There’s a pair of duets with Franco Corelli from 1973 that Decca includes to demonstrate how far Tebaldi declined from the heights of her glory years. In the Verdi, from the last act of Aida, she actually sings Amnneris’ part. The proceedings conclude with treacly sentimental garbage purportedly sung in English and, believe it or not, “If I loved you”, from Richard Rodgers’ Carousel, sung in no known language. If you’re a Puccini fan, you’ll want the disc for those early recordings if you don’t already have them. If you’re a Tebaldi fan, you’ll want to do something bad to whatever mentally challenged individual chose to desecrate the memory of one of the great sopranos of the 20th century.
