Jennie Tourel had a lovely voice, though it no longer seems as outstanding as it once did given the plethora of mezzos with which we are blessed these days. But she was more than a voice, which is why there’s enduring interest in her singing, with reissues of her work popping up lately from Decca, VAI, and, if you include Sony’s now hard-to-find Bernstein Century series, many of the major recordings she made with him. Pearl weighs in with a French program that includes some of her most impressive work, drawn from Columbia recordings made between 1947 and 1952 when she was a ubiquitous presence in the concert hall.
The two big lyric scenes by Ravel and Berlioz give us the Tourel who, without over-emoting or doing violence to the written text, infuses the works with the intensity and dramatic presence of a fine actress. In Shéhérazade, for example, she floats the phrase “de rêves” in a moving manner that doesn’t call attention to itself, drains her voice of color at the start of La Flûte enchantée, and delivers a ravishing pianissimo passage in the third song of the set.
In Berlioz’s dramatic “lyric scene” on the death of Cleopatra, she becomes the character, fully encompassing the Queen’s anger, regret, and resignation while also demonstrating a voice that’s seamless throughout its range. Unfortunately, the transfers are inferior: background noise is eliminated at the price of shrill violins, a loss of immediacy to the voice, and muffled orchestral detail, failings that apply equally to the Ravel. Both works need wide-ranging stereo to make their full effect–especially in Shéhérazade, to bring out its multitude of colors. And this segment of the Pearl disc is rendered superfluous if you can find both the Bernstein Century release, which includes the same performance of the Ravel (Sony 60695), and Tourel with Bernstein again in their 1961 stereo recording of Cléopatre coupled with a smashing Harold in Italy (Sony 60696).
But the superfluity applies only to those two works. Half of this generously timed disc is devoted to Offenbach, and this singer known for her partnership with Bernstein in Mahler and various modern works was one of the great Offenbach singers. Four selections from La Périchole with Maurice Abravenel in his pre-Utah days amply demonstrate that, including an affecting “Je t’adore” and a deliciously tipsy “Ah! Quel diner”. There’s also the Barcarolle from Tales of Hoffmann along with six wonderfully spirited airs, done to perfection, from five other Offenbach operettas, adapted and re-orchestrated for her by Manuel Rosenthal in the suite La Vie Parisienne. While the shrill violins are slightly tamed in this set of transfers, the voice is more forward and present, and the sound takes on a vibrancy so sorely missing from the Ravel and Berlioz pieces. Too bad you can’t just keep half-a-CD; but if you love Offenbach you should hear Tourel.
