From: conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Immortal opera recordings
Date: 17 Aug 92 13:42:41 GMT
Organization: University of Delaware

In article <1992Aug14.212318.24453@sbil.co.uk> fgh@taormina.sbi.com (Frank Hamilton @ Salomon Brothers Inc., NY ) writes:

>It is kind of hard for me to call the 8/53 Callas Tosca perfect.  It is
>hard to do so because both Callas and Gobbi later surpassed *certain*
>dramatic emotional elements of this early Tosca with even more profound
>interpretations.

I understand.  That's why I hedged and said *virtually* perfect; while I
listen to this recording it seems ideal, even though I might find the
same (or other) artists surpassing their work here, on another occasion.

>In any case, perhaps one could say that the '53 Tosca for EMI is
>definitive, 

Well, as r.m.c readers know, I avoid the d-word like the plague.

>One person mentioned that their nomination was the Sutherland/Pavarotti
>Turandot.  I just can't accept this.  It is not even a good Turandot.

I was tempted to name it too.  I didn't, because I didn't want to get
into just such an argument as this!  But I don't feel frustrated and
annoyed with obvious petty inadequacies listening to it, as I do with
other recorded Turandots.  (Which may prove my didactic point in another
way -- a recording may be "without serious flaw" and still
insufficient.)

>Sutherland sounds like she is sight-reading the role for the first time.

Well, we all know she never performed the role except on this recording.
But I wonder if you are retrofitting this bit of knowledge onto her
performance.  She sounds fully inside it and committed, to me.  In fact,
more so than on many recordings of her regular repertory.  "Speranza che
deludo sempre" may be the most incisively declaimed line she ever
uttered.

>For me there is only one Turandot and Calaf - Nilsson and Corelli.  Neither
>Bjoerling or Pavarotti are worthly to stand in this Calaf's shadow.  

I recognize the greatness of Nilsson and Corelli in these roles; I'd be
a fool not to, for Nilsson as Turandot was my first operatic experience
(Chicago Lyric, 1959).  They're superb, as they were in the many
performances they sang together all over the world.  But that doesn't
exclude the legitimacy of other interpreters of the role.  Bjoerling was
also a fine Calaf, as was (at this early point) Pavarotti.

>I
>would be willing to volunteer the EMI Nilsson/Corelli Turandot as a
>near-perfect recording.  

Not I.  Not with that orchestra, and that chorus.  (Those are IMPORTANT
in this opera.)

>I would also volunteer the Nilsson/Corelli Aida
>as a near-perfect recording.  They are electric.  If I could own only one
>Aida and Turandot, it would be these.

I can recognize and understand your reasons for such choice.  Myself,
while enjoying both recordings when I've heard them, I've been able to
get along without having them in my collection.  (Let me add that I'm
not happy with ANY of the recorded Aidas.)

>As for Jon's comments about "live-vs.-studio".  I very much miss the
>energy and applause the audience adds to the occasion.  It seems so
>unnatural the hear a big drum-roll and cadence followed by black
>silence at the end of a scene.  

It matters more to me when I am actually IN the audience.

>It is even better when the applause
>starts a whole page before the end like the Callas Rigoletto from
>Mexico City :-)

In Rigoletto etc., fine; the orchestra is doing rum-ti-tum on I and V
anyway, and is asking to be drowned out by oceans of applause.  (I don't
mean this description pejoratively -- it's just the way such operas are
designed.)  But not at the end of Act II of Meistersinger, or the end of
Tristan or Goetterdaemmerung.  Those demand silence till they're over
and for another 10 seconds after.  This is one respect in which records
can give us a more "genuine" (more musical, more truly dramatic)
experience than the opera house can, unless one is at Bayreuth.

>As for not "a quality that automatically arises in live performance",
>this is true because live performances now days are just as cold and
>sterile as canned performances have always been.  

Here you make a very good point, with which I agree.  I might substitute
"often" for your "always" at the end, but your general point is quite
right.

Jon Alan Conrad

>What happened?  Today opera is sterilized for armchair-yuppie-scholars
>and pseudo-intellectual critics (bred on canned music) like those of
>Gramophone Magazine (look up their review of the PHILIPS William Tell).

Wasn't that a scandalous review?  Fortunately, another critic (a *real*
scholar and intellectual, not pseudo), David Hamilton, pointed out the
truth in OPERA QUARTERLY: that this performance, as caught on records,
marks a milestone in understanding of William Tell, for it gives it the
scope and grandeur of a great opera.  And (just so we don't get caught
up in our pigeonholings of careers) credit for this belongs principally
to Riccardo Muti, who in other respects is one of the chief culprits
when it comes to sterile by-the-numbers academic opera performances.
Still true to some extent here, but he also had the vision to see this
opera as a whole, and the skill to project it as such.  I've listened to
it, and David is quite right; I would not have bothered to try, had his
writing not pointed me in the right direction.

Jon Alan Conrad
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical,rec.music.cd