Search - Mascherini, Callas, Tajo :: Verdi: Macbeth (Complete); Otello (Complete) [Germany]

The Callas "Macbeth" and the Vinay-Busch "Otello in a four-d

L. E. Cantrell | Vancouver, British Columbia Canada | 07/19/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"SOURCE, "MACBETH":

Live performance from La Scala in Milan, December 1952.



SOUND, "MACBETH":

In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the sound of this set suggests that it was originally an AM broadcast that was recorded off the air under less than ideal conditions. There is a consistent fuzziness in the orchestral pick-up, at least for listeners accustomed to digital crispness. The most exasperating fault of the set is a couple of fuzzy patches, perhaps some sort of radio interference in--of all places!--the great sleepwalking scene. All that notwithstanding, the overall sound of this "Macbeth" isn't bad, particularly when measured against the dismal average of Callas' live recordings. As is usual for recordings of the period, the solo voices sound fine, the orchestra and the chorus less so.



CAST, "MACBETH":

Macbeth - Enzo Mascherini (baritone)

Lady Macbeth - Maria Callas (soprano)

Banquo - Italo Tajo (bass)

Macduff - Gino Penno (tenor)

Malcolm - Luciano della Pergola (tenor)

Lady Macbeth's Maid - Angela Vercelli (soprano)

Doctor - Dario Caselli (bass)

Servant - Atilo Barbesi (bass)

Herald - Ivo Vinco (bass)

Murderer - Mario Tommasini (bass)



CONDUCTOR, "MACBETH":

Victor de Sabata, with Orchestra e Coro del Teatro alla Scala di Milano.



TEXT, "MACBETH":

There are some cuts, most noticeably a verse of Lady Macbeth's drinking song in the banquet scene. On the other hand, the inclusion of the ballet music in Act 3 is a bit of a surprise in a performance of this vintage. Unfortunately, the final number of the opera is the revised version added by Verdi many years after the premier, when he had discovered that the final arietta for Macbeth in which he regrets his sins and his self-destructive pursuit of the crown to be false Shakespeare. The first version is a very effective closer for the opera; the second, an extended taunting of Macbeth's corpse, is very likely the worst thing ever written by Verdi, the grand master of stirring choruses.



COMMENTARY, "MACBETH":

On December 7, 1952, Maria Callas opened the La Scala season with her first performance of Lady Macbeth. This was the first operatic performance ever to be broadcast live from the stage of La Scala. Callas wowed the audience. She received seven curtain calls for her sleepwalking scene. On December 17, 1952, Callas sang in her fifth performance of "Macbeth." It was the last time. She never performed the complete opera again in her lifetime.



There are those who dismiss Callas' Lady Macbeth. Some say that this soprano or that soprano from the 1920s or earlier was better, although on no better evidence than a scratchy rendition of an aria or two or the written memoirs of some critic. Others reserve higher praise for more recent divas who are praised for better vocal technique, tone, or any or all of several things supposedly lacking in Callas' bundle of skills. I have heard most of Callas' successors in the part of Lady Macbeth, most recently Jean Eaglen in an edifying if not particularly entertaining swing-and-a-miss with the Vancouver Opera. And I am certainly happy to praise a certain live performance by Christa Ludwig. Nevertheless, there is no complete recording of "Macbeth" in which the Lady Macbeth approaches Callas, let alone matches or betters her. No, she is not perfect. Yes, she remains the best, so far.



Over the years, Enzo Mascherini has been damned with faint praise or outright dismissed as incompetent. He sounds all right to me. Not great, but certainly all right. That, actually, is fairly high praise when one considers what a bear the part of Macbeth is for any singer. The length, the intensity, the tessitura of the role, all of them are appalling from singer's perspective. The great Tito Gobbi studied the part for years but never quite dared to bring it off.



Italo Tajo starts off a little roughly but settles down to be an admirable Banquo. Callas seemed to have a real talent for bringing out the worst in everybody. In later years, Tajo was another of the several performers with whom relations soured into a feud.



The disgracefully under-recorded Gino Penno turns in a truly first-rate Macduff. His voice has both the weight and gravitas to make him wholly convincing as a tyrant's foreordained foe.



Victor de Sabata, also disgracefully under-recorded, does a fine job on the podium, giving the opera a wonderful sense of forward motion. The Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala both sound fine.



SOURCE, "OTELLO":

Live performance from the Metropolitan Opera, 1948.



SOUND, "OTELLO":

Once again in the absence of information to the contrary, I assume that this is a recording of an AM broadcast from the old Met. It is free of commentary from Milton Cross and the between-acts chitter-chatter. (You are free to breathe a sigh of blessed relief or to curse such egregious omissions as you see fit.) Microphone placement in those days was a bit iffy, leading to some imbalances. The most obvious example of this is Otello's "Esultate" at his first appearance. I am willing to bet that he appeared well upstage and far to the side, about as far away from the microphones as he could be. The inevitable result is that his great cry of triumph--which probably came close to blowing the audience away--is recorded as little more than a squeak.



Over a four-year period, Vinay recorded "Otello" for Toscanini, performed at the old Metropolitan under Fritz Busch and again at Salzburg with Furtwaengler. All three versions are available on CD. The Toscanini performance has the familiar, dry NBC studio sound. The broadcast sound from the Met a bit boxy and distant but perfectly listenable. The Furtwaengler performance is similar to most recordings from Salzburg in those days, inexplicably awful.



CAST, "OTELLO":

Otello - Ramon Vinay (tenor)

Desdemona - Licia Albanese (soprano)

Iago - Leonard Warren (baritone)

Emilia - Martha Lipton (mezzo-soprano)

Cassio - John Garris (tenor)

Rodrigo - Thomas Haywood (tenor)

Lodovico - Nicola Moscona (bass)

Montano - Clifford Harvuot (bass)

Herald - Philip Cinsman (bass)



CONDUCTOR, "OTELLO":

Fritz Busch with the Orchestra and Chorus of the Metropolitan Opera, New York.



COMMENTARY, "OTELLO":

Ramon Vinay was a tremendous Tristan and one of the great portrayers of the operatic men of sorrow: Siegmund, Tannhaeuser and Otello. He began as a baritone, pushed up to become a dramatic tenor and then finished out his career as a baritone once again. At the mid-point of the Twentieth Century, he was the Otello of choice for conductors of gigantic stature, such as Toscanini, Busch and Furtwaengler. I have seen it argued that he was at his best under Busch and at his weakest under Toscanini. I have heard all three performances and, frankly, the differences are too subtle--or perhaps too subjective--for me to detect. There are differences, of course, but hardly anything to take firmly in hand and say THIS is good and THAT is bad. As far as I am concerned, he is terrific in each of the three recorded performances.



Leonard Warren was a great baritone but not a true-born Iago. He sings very well here, but I prefer Toscanini's harder-edged Giuseppe Valdengo in the role of His Mooreship's Ancient. Furtwaengler's Paul Schoeffler, was yet another fine singer, but he offered a thoroughly Germanic villain, not Verdi's or even Shakespeare's very Italian monster.



Furtwaengler's Desdemona is no more than minimally adequate and completely out of the running against Toscanini's Herva Nelli and Busch's Licia Albanese. Any choice to be made between those two formidable ladies will be purely a matter of personal taste. (My own purely personal preference is for Albanese.)



In listening to the Busch "Otello," two things become clear very quickly: first, the quality and depth of the Met's comprimarios in those days was tremendous, and second, the chorus was mediocre at best. Here in "Otello" (as in the roughly contemporary Bjorling "Faust"), they were simply not up to the task to the degree that could reasonably be expected of the chorus at one the world's great opera houses.



For those who can accept historic sound and don't mind unimpressive choral work, this is a fine "Otello" with one of the truly great Otellos of the Twentieth Century.



****



Here are two historically important and enjoyable operatic performances offered on four disks in a single box, originally offered for about the price of a single disk. Snap it up, even if you already have one or the other of the operas!



Five stars. "Ecco il mercato!"



LEC/Am/07-07"