Search - Vincenzo Bellini, Franco Capuana, Anna Maria Anelli :: Bellini: La Sonnambula

The best all-round performance of "La Sonnambula"

L. E. Cantrell | Vancouver, British Columbia Canada | 01/03/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Source: Studio recording from 1952. While I am not familiar with the details of the history of this particular recording, I assume that it follows the pattern of many opera recordings originally released by the Italian Cetra label: recorded primarily for broadcast with subsequent release on 78 rpm records and Lps a secondary consideration.



Sound: Good 1950s mono. As is customary for the period and particularly for Cetra recordings, voices are given primacy over the orchestra. While no-one is likely to confuse this set with an up-to-date digital recording, the sound is, nevertheless, pleasing, especially when heard with a little good will.



Cast: Amina - Lina Pagliughi; Elvino - Ferruccio Tagliavini; Il Conte Rodolfo - Cesare Siepi; Lisa - Wanda Rugeri; Teresa - Anna Maria Anelli; Alessio - Pier Luigi Latinucci; Un Notario - Armando Benzi. Conductor: Franco Capuana with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Torino della RAI and Coro Cetra.



In the 1960s, with stereo and the Lp-format firmly established, the harsh, mono recordings of the Italian Cetra label were generally dismissed as rough, crude and provincial. This was particularly true in comparison with the amazing new operatic soundscapes emerging from the studios, the most spectacular of them all being the Solti-Culshaw Ring Cycle. Sonic perfection was what we all wanted, a thing that certainly was never to be heard in any live performance. Time has an uncomfortable habit of changing things, for now, when I hear those fabulous studio recordings, it seems to me that their supposed perfection was attained at the expense of liveliness, or even life, itself. What had seemed rough and ready now seems pure vitality. These days, when I hear Solti's overblown Ring with Culshaw's incessant and obsessive tweaking, I think, "You guys have GOT to be kidding!"



Crude and provincial? Consider the cast of this "La Sonnambula:" Pagliughi, Tagliavini and Siepi. The Glyndebourne and Salzburg Festivals should have such crude and provincial casts! This is an Italian production with Italian singers, conductor, orchestra and chorus in a quintessentially Italian opera. All these things are plainly there to be heard on the disks.



While Lina Pagliughi was undoubtedly excellent, I am willing to concede that she was not quite in the league of Sutherland or Callas, purely as a singer. And maybe the same with regard to Devia, too, although I am not entirely convinced about that. But she is a better Amina than any of her successors. She is totally convincing as the ultimate, sweetly innocent, love-besotted, feather-headed and, yes, girlish soprano. Sutherland is always too droopy. Callas is burdened with the baggage of fiery Norma and Medea. Devia sounds too self-confident, too ... well, intelligent (an accusation I am loathe to hurl at any opera singer.) Some Amazon reviewers, I find, judge sopranos purely on notes high above the staff and on trills. These things occupy about one per-cent of any score. Pagliughi sings that one per-cent perfectly adequately and the other ninety-nine per-cent fabulously. That's good enough for me!



Ferruccio Tagliavini and Cesare Valletti are the only two tenors worth hearing as Elvino. (The wretched Nicola Monti is casually blown out of the picture by the overwhelming presence of Callas. Luciano Pavarotti as Elvino is fatally burdened by the unfortunate fact that he sounds exactly like Luciano Pavarotti singing Elvino. Luca Canonici, on Devia's recording, sounds depressingly as though he had learned the part from Pavarotti's recording.) Tagliavini, when he chooses to do so, can be almost as elegant as the super-elegant Valletti, but he can call also on power and squillo entirely beyond anything available to the lighter-voiced Valletti. Elvino is that archetypical Italian opera character, the self-centered, jealous, tenorial jerk for whom perfectly nice Italian sopranos fall, usually with dire consequences. Tagliavini and Valetti neatly capture Elvino's dubious character from his very first notes. (Pavarotti and Canonici seem to be engaging in singing contests; Monti is hardly noticeable.) Tagliavini is at his impressive best in the duets with Pagliughi. Their voices, acting and singing styles are in exact alignment. They provide true pleasure, both together and apart.



As the Count, Cesare Siepi is a sort of older, wiser, kinder Don Giovanni. In Act I, there is a short scene in which the sleepwalking Amina turns up in the Count's hotel room clad in nothing but her night dress. For a few bars, Siepi is so much in full Giovanni-mode that you can almost hear Leporello riffling through the pages of his catalogue in preparation for a new entry: "In Italia seicento e . . ." No other Count on record, to my knowledge at least, can hold a candle to Siepi.



As for the rest, the orchestra, chorus and supporting players, all are as they should be in this charming and tuneful bit of fluff. Every part works beautifully with every other part to make this, as a whole, the best performance of "La Sonnambula" that I know or ever expect to encounter.



Five stars.



A NOTE ON DISCOGRAPHY: It is a pleasure to discover this recording on the Preiser label and at budget price, for it may now be assumed that this "La Sonnambula" will remain easily available in the live catalogue for some time to come. This does not seem to be the case for its previous incarnation on the Warner Fonit label. Warner Fonit had picked up the old, disregarded trove of Cetra opera recordings, cleaned up their painfully acidic sound and re-issued what had always been a gaggle of ugly ducklings as a wholly unexpected flock of downy swans. I can only suppose that the financial return on the effort proved unsatisfactory to Warner Fonit's corporate masters, for the label is plainly expiring. More than a year ago, retailers here in Vancouver complained to me that they had given up on Warner Fonit because of sheer non-response to their orders. Week after week I have watched one WF title after another become unavailable in the Amazon listings, even as--ahem--enterprising second-hand dealers have industriously jacked their prices up into three figures."