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Bel Canto Society Newsletter
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New on DVD: Andrea Chénier |
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Andrea Chénier DVD $18.95 It's doubtful that most of you ever have attended a performance as thrilling as this one. Several now-defunct companies released this performance on VHS. Our DVD version easily surpasses all earlier incarnations, including ours. The images don't look like they come from a kinescope (although they do). Our tech Jonathan Casper restored the audio. Although occasional flaws remain, overall, the results are a joy! Chénier was the role with which Del Monaco changed singing by introducing a technique taught by Arturo Melocchi, based on singing with the larynx kept low, at the bottom of the neck. It gave Del Monaco a powerful, brassy, thick, muscular, penetrating sound. In March 1949 Del Monaco sang Chénier at La Scala. His performances excited the public and marked a changing of the guard. Gigli sang his final Scala performances in 1947, as Chénier. His object and that of the tenors he influenced was, above all, to caress you. Del Monaco's was to excite you. Del Monaco sang La Scala's March 6, 1949 broadcast of Chénier. On hearing it Corelli, already having tried many teachers, went to study with Melocchi. Their lowered-larynx approach has been copied by Vladimir Atlantov, Giuseppe Giacomini, Luis Lima, Nicola Martinucci and a host of others. Albert Innaurato, reviewing in The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Opera on Video "This is the best Chénier on video, and the sound track is thrilling to hear. The producer, Corradi, gives the opera a traditional but imaginative treatment, distinguished by a real sympathy for the idiom and these singers. "The caliber of these performers is rarely matched elsewhere. The many supporting singers are superb--vocally excellent for the most part, and all totally inside their parts and very inventive. This isn't opera to them, it's life. Looking at the other videos [of Chénier] one could scarcely imagine so much detail was possible. L'Incredibile (Athos Cesarini) is played as an 'exquisite,' Roucher (Franco Calabrese) has an arresting dignity and a splendid voice, the lower-class characters are full of color, unction, and danger. "Del Monaco and Stella look wonderful. The tenor, youthful here with a rare vulnerability and sweetness, does almost none of the carrying on for which he was famous. His Chénier is above all a person: ardent, needy, and sensitive. It's amazing to realize, but he has a real talent for camera acting. Stella matches him for tenderness and abandon. One doesn't expect to like or believe in the poet and his Maddalena, but these two are so endearing and recognizable as decent humans caught up in murderous events that the opera becomes very moving. They sound spectacular on the sound track. "Taddei was one of two great Italian baritones of his period (the other was Tito Gobbi). His is an immense voice of glorious impact, and he is a charismatic and detailed actor. He was a short, very chubby man, but like all great actors, uses and transcends his physical appearance. Not for a second is Gérard other than a complex, haunting, and unique human being. Taddei understands and projects that Gérard's actions are rooted in a profound need for love and belonging. His understanding in Act III that he can never have it, and belongs neither with the gentry nor the revolutionaries, makes his the tragic fate in the opera. He is heartbreaking there." Tully Potter, reviewing in International Opera Collector "Giuseppe Taddei shows his other face (all the more menacing for the rotundity of his physique) in Andrea Chénier, a 1955 film from the same source as the Elisir in black and white. The great baritone is in his best voice and I rate this alongside his earlier sound recording of Rigoletto (under the same conductor, Angelo Questa) as the finest representation of him in a serious part. You can see the conflicting emotions flicker across his face in 'Nemico della patria.' "Antonietta Stella looks and sounds superb in one of her best roles and the supporting cast includes such stalwarts as Franco Calabrese. Mario Del Monaco looks good as Chénier and sings with his customary panache, though he is more soldier than poet--in tenor terms, more Martinelli than Pertile. The production by Mario Landi is worthy of the terrific singing." Alan Blyth, reviewing in Gramophone "I have never enjoyed Chénier as much as on this video, another of the 1950s films made expressly for Italian television. In what we can now hear and see as a golden era for the performance of Italian opera, an almost ideal cast was assembled under the well-routined baton of Questa. The staging is conventional in the best sense, catching much of the frisson of the French revolutionary drama while concentrating rightly on the principals--and what principals! "Del Monaco, in his prime, is perfect casting for the title-role and conveys Chénier's ardent, fiery nature in his acting and singing. In spite of his reputation for unremittingly forte delivery, he here tempers his stentorian outbursts--the best of which is 'Sì, fui soldato' before the revolution's tribunal--with singing of a subtler hue in the romantic passages in which the part abounds. As his beloved Maddalena, Stella was also at the height of her appreciable, underrated powers, equal to all the considerable demands of her role and deeply moving in 'La mamma morta', her explanation of her plight to the complex character (most interesting in the work) of Gérard. Their scene in Act 3 is the heart of the piece and Taddei is superb in his part of it. He gives ample profile to 'Nemico della patria' and thereafter explores every facet of the role as his lust for Maddalena is sublimated into platonic affection. His warm, pliant voice is ideally employed throughout and he acts with patent sincerity--a great assumption. There's no weakness, many strengths in the all-Italian support, with special praise due to the blind Madelon whose beseeching solo is movingly done." Chénier can be a powerhouse opera with the right cast. This is that cast, all in their absolute prime. The opera is sung gloriously from beginning to end; the acting is excellent throughout. Never a great favorite of mine, Taddei nevertheless sings better here than in anything else of his I've heard. The young Stella is lovely to look at, and she is certainly an affecting actress. She sings beautifully throughout, including some high pianissimos that come as surprises as she certainly didn't use them much in her Met years. She takes that always dangerous and almost always problematic top note in "La mamma morta" perfectly and is alert at all times to her partners' nuances. Nuance is hardly the first thing you'd think about when discussing Del Monaco, but excellent as the others are, this is his show and he brings it off splendidly--better than any other Chénier I have ever seen. He has been criticized for a lack of nobility in his art, and if one only is hearing him that criticism is at least understandable. As with his Otello, however, seeing him is another matter, and I have no hesitation in proclaiming him, at least in this role, equal to the most noble vision to emanate from an operatic stage in my time. (Martinelli was before my time.) From his first appearance through the final duet he is the personification of the French poet. There is not a dishonest or overacted moment. While singing up a storm in the "Improvviso," he acts with extraordinary restraint, but his eyes blaze forth his rage in keeping with his stentorian sounds. His look of disappointment at Maddalena's frivolity as he sings "O giovinetta bella" is worthy of Olivier--no joke! I found my eyes welling up with tears as this aria was concluding, a situation I rarely have encountered with pile-driving dramatic tenor voices but one which I experienced twice more here--in the final duet and in the entire "Sì, fui soldato!," the latter on a dramatic par with anything I ever have encountered from any singer from a visual standpoint. This is a well-directed television production, with the voices nicely synchronized. Once you get into the spirit of this performance all external considerations will dissipate immediately. Very highly recommended! From the Booklet Antonietta Stella (born 1929) made her debut, in Spoleto, in 1950, as Leonora, in Il trovatore and repeated the role the following year at the Teatro dell'Opera, in Rome. In 1951 she also appeared in Stuttgart, Munich and Wiesbaden and then Florence, Naples, Rome, Catania, Parma, Turin, Lisbon and Perugia. In 1953 she made her debut not only at the Verona Arena but also at La Scala, where she remained until 1963. She made frequent appearances at the Vienna State Opera, Covent Garden, Paris, Brussels and Chicago. Her Met debut, in 1956, was in Trovatore. She continued to appear there until 1960. At the time of Stella's debut her middle voice had both darkness and shine, a savory combination rarely encountered. The sound was ample down to D or C below the staff, where she didn't have to use chest resonance. (Most sopranos have no power there without it.) Above high A, however, the sound was less voluptuous. Still, no soprano in Italy had a more resplendent voice, not excepting Anita Cerquetti or Caterina Mancini. Stella didn't inflect her tone, singing Butterfly with the same all-purpose color as Minnie. When music suited her sound she was hair-raising, as in Respighi's La fiamma (she told me, however, that she had been "overcoached" by the composer's widow). At the time of her discovery Stella was working in a bakery. She never learned to care for her voice. Most singers are fastidious about avoiding certain foods, but she complained to me after a performance of La forza del destino that she would have sung better had she eaten her accustomed salami for breakfast. A great "natural," Stella lacked the technique to preserve her voice, and by her late 20s it was less luminous, the career fading when she was in her 30s. Rosina Wolf's repertoire ranged from Carmen to the Queen of the Night to Butterfly, Salome, Isolde, Brünnhilde and Norma. With Stefan Zucker she appeared on RAI, Italian state television, in music from I puritani. She is to be heard on Stefan Zucker: The World's Highest Tenor (currently out of print). Giuseppe Taddei (born 1916) made his debut, in 1936, at the Teatro dell'Opera, as the Herald in Lohengrin. During the war the Germans arrested him, in the Italian Alps, on the grounds that he was a member of the Resistance. In 1946 he made his debut at the Vienna State Opera. In 1947 he appeared as Figaro, in Le nozze di Figaro, at the Salzburg Festival. In that year he also sang at the Cambridge Theatre, London. He performed on all the principal Italian stages, also at Covent Garden and in Paris, Buenos Aires and Rio. Making his Met debut in 1951, he returned there in 1985, for the title role in Falstaff. A remarkably versatile artist, Taddei excelled not only as a dramatic baritone but also as a buffo. He is the Dulcamara on a 1955 kinescope of L'elisir d'amore (Bel Canto Society #D687 (DVD) and #687 (VHS). |
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