Giaochino Rossini: La Donna del Lago

This 1970 broadcast recording issued on the budget Opera d"Oro label in 1999 is a beautiful one.  The state-owned radio and television company RAI's Turin-based orchestra conducted by Piero Bellugi performs wonderfully and with sensitivity behind the singers.

These are led by Montserrat Caballé, a Spanish soprano who was, evidently, at the peak of her powers at the time.  Her singing is, to this amateur's limited background, pure, emotive, and highly controlled.  The Italian tenor, Franco Bonisolli, has a very strong voice and an impressive range and presence.  Then there is Hungarian contralto Julia Hamari, who also performs with great flair and aplomb.  The revelation, however, for this unseasoned listener, is Caballé, whose emotional vocalizing and clarity are stunning.  The several choruses are also notable.

Rossini was better known for such operas as The Barber of Seville, William Tell, and La Cenerentola (Cinderella).  A prodigy who composed fine string sonatas as a preteen, the first of his amazing output of thirty-nine operas came when he was eighteen.  His staggering workload continued until he was thirty-seven, when he abruptly retired as a composer in 1829, when William Tell was finished.

Rossini was so skilled in composing gorgeous melodies and in developing fluid and pleasing themes that he was often compared to Mozart and La Donna del Lago, based on Sir Walter Scott's famed narrative poem, The Lady of the Lake, is filled to the brim with these.  The librettist was Andrea Leone Tottola and the opera premiered at Naples in September 1819.  Though it apparently was not well received, it did prove to have success in subsequent offerings, then went unperformed for over a century.  In the 1960s and afterward, however, La Donna del Lago, found a revival, including this acclaimed performance.

While the sources of some of the Opera d'Oro releases are of low quality in terms of fidelity, this recording is clear and clean and the sound is balanced.  For the price, this is a great bargain given the excellent sound and the tremendous performances, including Bonisolli and, especially, the astounding Caballé.

Giuseppe Verdi: La Traviata

Now plumbing, to the best of an amateur's limited abilities, the complicated, eccentric but fascinating depths, to the best of an amateur's ability, of Harry Partch's manifesto, Genesis of a Music, it has proven interesting to read the iconoclastic composer's differentiation between "corporeal" and "abstract" music. 

The former, to Partch's world view, is the truer form of music, emanating from ancient Greek performances in which music, singing in speech-like patterns without embellishment, and dance are inextricable and "corporeal" in terms of the fuller expression of the human body in an environment in which the words matter in concert with the music and the dance.

From the time, however, that church music in medieval Europe began to feature elongated vocalizations and, in Partch's mind, the meaning of the text was sublimated under the desire to emphasize vocal gymnastics and histrionics, the value of corporeal music was overrun by "abstract" music.  The abstraction, further embodied in later periods in ostentatious music and vocal puffery, represents to him a regression and a denigration of the ideal in corporeal music.

As explained further by Partch, the nadir of abstraction in music comes with the modern opera, as well as other forms of music, in which, for example, overwrought emotion and the elaboration of syllables via interminable trilling and other trickeries of the human voice, along with the self-consciousness of the score, overwhelm any sense of meaning in the libretto.

It is an interesting argument and there is a good deal of sense to much of what Partch argues, if one were to believe that what is "legitimate" in music can be based on a determinable logical structure.  To this untutored music lover, though, there is as much of value in a work like Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata from the purely musical (and the vocalizing is, in a way, as much instrumental as the performance by the orchestra) standpoint, regardless of whether the lyrics and the story are understood and appreciated.  Abstraction does not have to be seen as a reduction in musical value, if one enjoys the great technical skill employed in the composition, instrumental performance, and vocalizations.

In fact, Partch's monophonic music based on forty-three semitones or ratios, while fascinating and enjoyable for an entire different set of reasons than La Traviata, can give the impression of being highly abstract (defined in another way from how Partch did) and difficult to listen to.  In other words, Partch thought of corporeal music as being truer to folk music as defined by what the Greeks did in ancient times, but his wonderfully strange music has proven to be far removed from a "folk" or, if you like, "popular" arena and has only been appreciated by a small, if highly appreciative, audience.

In any case, puffery or abstract or whatever, La Traviata is one of the greatest operas ever written and Verdi, who was prolific in composing over two-dozen operas, completed his work in 1853 on the heels of the wildly successful Rigoletto and Il Trovatore.  In this 1973 recording from Japan, released on the budget label Allegro under its "Opera D'Oro" series, the great Renata Scotto is paired with José Carreras, who was just beginning to make his mark in the opera world (long before the notorious Three Tenors project.)  Sesto Bruscantini has a notable opportunity to display his great talent in Act 2's "Di Provenzo il Mar, il Suol."  The orchestra plays beautifully, conducted by Nino Verchi.

Verdi's masterful melodic touch, emotional expression, and superb aligning of the score with the libretto and the vocalizing, is consistently brilliant throughout and Scotto is just breathtaking, while Carreras shows his formidable talent coming to the fore and Bruscantini is exceptional in the company of his colleagues' legendary abilities.

While the basis of the opera on a kind-hearted but tubercular prostitute in the Paris of Verdi's day was unconventional and controversial, its adaptation from Alexander Dumas, Jr.'s La Dame aux Camélias ultimately proved to be beyond the temporary shock of the subject matter (in England, there was no translation or summary to avoid dismay by early Victorian-era audiences there) and La Traviata took its place alongside such masterpieces as La Bohéme and Carmen as the acme of opera in the era.  It did take some reconfiguration of writing for the vocals after a subpar opening at Venice in March 1853 to propel the opera to massive public and critical acclaim.

The story of the doomed lovers Violetta and Alfredo comes to the inevitable tragic end as she succumbs to her disease as Alfredo violently laments her demise.  Verdi's integration of music, singing, story and emotion is staggering and this 40-year old performance is exceptional, even if the recording is not the state-of-the-art kind many listeners expect and/or demand now, though the remastering does a good job of trying to get close to that standard.

Giacomo Puccini: La Bohème

As with the blues, opera is only a recent, budding (but rapidly so) interest.  Moreover, as an admitted bargain hunter, YHB has mainly been dipping the proverbial toe in the water with budget-label productions.

That said, the Opera D'Oro imprint of the Columbia River Entertainment Group based in Portland, Oregon has released many older recordings of classic operas.  This one, of Giacomo Puccini's masterpiece La Bohème, dates from a performance in July 1969 in Rome by the RAI Symphony Orchestra and Chorus of Rome, conducted by Thomas Schippers.

The star performers on this 4-act, 2-disc set are Modena, Italy natives and childhood compatriots Mirella Freni (1935-    ) and Luciano Pavarotti (1935-2007), who play Mimi, a sickly seamstress, and Rodolfo, a struggling poet, who live in the same ramshackle Paris building and whose passionate love affair, brought forth on a cold Christmas Eve, is torn asunder by his jealous nature and the fights that ensue. 

Comedic foils, Musetta and Marcello, whose relationship has also been strained, try to help reconcile the lovers, which is finally accomplished at the end of the third act.  Alas, while the final fourth act has Rodolfo and Marcello jovially musing on the nature of women, Musetta brings a dying Mimi to his garret. 

While Musetta and a friend of Rodolfo's go to pawn possessions to summon a doctor, the lovers tenderly talk about their relationship and Mimi softly goes to sleep.  As Rodolfo covers the windows with blankets to keep out a bitter draft and then returns to check on his lover, he is shocked to learn that she passed away in her sleep.

It is easy with modern digital recording technology and superior playback equipment to be disappointed in the quality of the sound from a performance taped almost 45 years ago.  Not one to get too caught up in the admittedly attractive aspects of advanced sound quality (after all, to hear, as just one example, Louis Armstrong play with the Hot Fives in recordings from the mid-1920s is a thrilling experience no matter how primitive the technology), the orchestra and singers are outstanding.

As a novice, the only recognizable name to this listener was that of the "King of the High Cs," Pavarotti, who is stunning in his power, clarity and evocation of emotion.  Freni is a wonder, as well, and the support provided by Rita Talarico as Musetta and Sesto Bruscantino as Marcello is beautifully rendered.

Puccini, of course, created some of opera's most endearing works in addition to La Bohème, including Madama Butterfly, Turandot and Tosca, all of which have been enjoyed by this listener within the last year or more.  La Bohème, which followed the well-known Manon Lescaut (1893), in its premiere at Turin in 1896 was not particularly highly regarded by critics and audiences.  Over time, though, it has become the most popular of the maestro's impressive catalog of operatic works.  Beautiful, impressionable melodies abound and the power, fullness and range from tragic to comic themes in the orchestration are remarkable.

As this listener becomes more familiar with opera, it will be useful to revisit the works that have been explored in these formative stages once more exposure and seasoning has set in as well as to see performances live (having only done so twice and these close to twenty years ago.)  For now, La Bohéme has had a strong impact on this developing neophyte enthusiast.