Search - Umberto Giordano, Franco Capuana, Aldo Protti :: Umberto Giordano: Andrea Chenier

A STUNNING PERFORMANCE!

F. Barton | Newport, WA USA | 05/27/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Opera D'Orio has done it again! This time a 1961 LIVE performance from Tokyo. If you own the video, it is the soundtrack, although highly cleaned up. What IS missing is the mountains of applause that followed Del Monaco's and Tebaldi's singing! But we can forgive that small detail here.Again, the price is SO affordable, and, as with almost all Tebaldi recordings, she was SO much better live than in the studio. The acoustics shine through in this, and no pitch waver at all.Superb singing, conducting, and packaging, all for under ten bucks. HOW can you beat that?"

A highlight in Opera d'Oro's verismo catgalog

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 04/16/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"In her entire repertoire, I think Tebaldi had the best instincts for the suffering heroines of verismo opera, and here she is caught in good voice in 1961 putting plenty of depth and passion into her Maddalena. Yes, by comparison with Callas she is at much lower temperature, but her 'La mama morta', albeit not fiery, is affectingly sung. True verismo passion must be sought elsewhere. Del Monaco shouts more than he did in his inspired live reading with Callas from La Scala in 1955, but that EMI set is in dreadful sound, much worse than the good, focused mono we hear here. The tenor is really the star, and his four arias are exciting, even though del Monaco doesn't seem able to give each one its own dramatic emotion. The minor characters are well sung by the ensemble, and the chorus is fairly well disciplined for a live performance. Since this was a show imported to Tokyo, I wonder if any of the chorus are Japanese. Franco Capuana's conducting shows great deference to his star singers. Aldo Protti's Gerard isn't a minor character, of course--he has more lines, I think, than Chenier himself, but the singing here is only servicable. In all, this is a very good night at the opera caught in good broadcast sound.

"