Search - Giuseppe Verdi, Walter Herbert, Orchestra of the New Orleans Opera Association :: Verdi: La Forza del Destino

YOU DON'T HEAR SOPRANOS LIKE THIS ANYMORE - THEY'RE EXTINCT!

L. Mitnick | Chicago, Illinois United States | 01/29/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Verdi"s "La Forza del Destino" is an opera that demands a great dramatic soprano in the Italian tradition - a voice type that is nowhere to be heard today. There have not been many great "Forza" sopranos in the last fifty years, and all have been recorded either live or in the studio. The illustrious list comprises Renata Tebaldi, Maria Callas, Leontyne Price, and Montserrat Caballe', and while I am the first to wax euphoric over all of them, none of the four, for me anyway, quite reached the level in this opera that Zinka Milanov did. The entire role could have been written for her. Milanov did a commercial recording of "Forza" for RCA in 1958, and while she sounded pretty good (save for a few scoops and gulps), she was 52 and probably just past her best singing days (but even in this later-career condition, she still sounded better than anyone who would attempt this role today!). She recorded highlights from "Forza" in the very early 1950's for RCA (where she at the apex of her vocal glory), but this recording has not found it's way to CD and probably never will. Then there was a live Met broadcast recording on November 29, 1952, where she probably sang better than ever before or since. This broadcast is almost impossible to get (I acquired it only by chance), which is too bad, because the broadcast sound is pretty decent. Now for THIS performance, which comes from New Orleans, and is comprised of two performances: March 12th and March 14th, 1953. The March 12th performance (complete as it was with the traditional cuts in fashion at the time)finds Milanov very close, but not quite on the level of her Met broadcast a few months earlier. The voice is obviously in its unrivaled prime, and she let's you know it.

Only one caveat: In the middle of the great Act II aria "Madre,Pietosa Vergine", the organ goes terribly flat, and causes Milanov to sound sharp as she tries to right the pitch. Other than that, the performance is wonderful to hear. Her magnificent "Pace, Pace, Mio Dio"in Act IV soars beautifully, and the high piano B flat near the end is a stunner! Mario del Monaco sounds better here than he does on his London studio recoring with Tebaldi and Leonard Warren sounds infinitely superior to his commercially recorded Don Alvaro on RCA (which he recorded with Milanov six years later). The March 14th performance is excerpted on the third CD, which is very good. The problem with the organ in the Act II aria has been corrected, and Milanov sounds even better in the aria here than she did two days earlier. The "Pace, Pace" from March 14th is not included.

The bottom line is this: I would not recommend this as the only recording of "Forza" to own, but I DO recommend it for anyone who would like to know what Zinka Milanov was all about. The sound overall is OK (a little peaking here and there, but nothing terrible) ----- far better than that which has been encountered of some of the Callas-live performances that EMI has seen fit to issue (especially the "Andrea Chenier" and the Giulini "Traviata"). This recording is a cherishable vocal document of dramatic soprano singing that we simply no longer hear anymore. For this reason, this recording is valuable.

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Golden Age Forza

G. Novakov | Louisiana | 02/03/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Golden Age" is a term that is thrown around often in dealing with opera performances, and I suspect that there are probably several "golden ages" with legitimate claims to the title. No one, I think, would disagree that a performance of a Verdi opera starring Zinka Milanov, Mario Del Monaco, and Leonard Warren would qualify.



I would place this performance of La Forza del Desitino (from a 1953 New Orleans Opera production) in that category, and here it is, finally, in remarkably good-quality sound. This performance has circulated previously in LP, tape, and even cd formats, but those recordings were from a poor master tape source and varied greatly in sound quality. This VAI release uses a recently-discovered source that is much clearer, cleaner, and vastly improved over earlier issues. The performance is first-rate, and (besides the stellar main cast) includes a young Norman Treigle in the small role of Leonora's father. A bonus disk includes excerpts from a second performance as a supplement. The informative booklet gives interesting insight into the performance history of this opera at the Met and in New Orleans as well. This is actually a new release in the VAI/New Orleans Opera Archives series (even though the cover does not indicate this), a series which also includes Zinka Milanov's final performance of Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana from a few years later.



Highly recommended to fans of Milanov, Del Monaco, Warren, and devotees of this particular "golden age.""