Géza Fodor
Hungaroton's Verdi Recordings-
A Decade and a Half On
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Of the five Verdi recordings, it is Ernani, the first in the series, which lives up most closely to the popular image of a Verdi opera: a big drama of passion based on the encounter and conflict of four strong, determined characters. Lamberto Gardelli accurately located and captured the opera within both the Verdi oeuvre and operatic history. The work's glue is still the treasury of musical idiom that Verdi found ready to hand in Italy's harvest of Romantic opera, but a new, passionate, punchy melodic strand that was the young genius's own emotional temperature, intensity and style takes fire within that setting. With the old idiom in his blood like a mother tongue, and articulating it spiritedly and ardently, Gardelli sensitively reinterprets Ernani in its precise historical proportions, not as a historical document but as a living drama. However resolute and strong the characters of the piece, they are not lacking in surprising idiosyncracies. The eponymous bandit, for one-in reality a ruined aristocrat who pathetically chooses life as an outlaw from society. Giorgio Lamberti, through his stylish vocal refinement and his shaping of the part, makes that original nobility shine through from first to last. Don Roy Gomez de Silva is a proud, stony-hearted Spanish grandee, but in two instances betrays his vulnerability to love, his emotional defencelessness. Kolos Kováts movingly discloses that hidden dimension both in the first part of his Act 1 aria and in the Act 2 passage beginning "Ah! io l'amo..." The big-gest psychological trajectory in the piece is that undertaken by Don Carlos, the later Charles V: from the singular passion of love through royal authority and a mature man eschewing all other human vanity for the sake of imperial power to the apotheosis of conferring clemency. Lajos Miller deftly and fully essays this huge journey every step of the way, offering the highest calibre of vocal interpretation in the whole production. Elvira is the simplest of the four principal roles, which may be why it seems to have been less than inspiring for Sylvia Sass, her appearance here being the most sketchy and least personal of her four recordings. There are few recordings of Ernani, but the Hungaroton one-currently reissued on CD by Philips-can be regarded as very fine and authentic.
Simon Boccanegra does not enjoy the popularity that it deserves on its merits. The main reason for that may be because, at its heart, it offers no big love story but a reflective male hero. Yet, in its revised 1881 version (as performed here), this is one of Verdi's most profound operas. It deals with the vanity of human designs and endeavours, the fact that life does not proceed as one intends but is arranged and ordered, wisely and disturbingly, behind one's back, so to speak. The episodes that display the most profundity are the dénouements of three Re-cognition scenes. Simone, Doge of Genoa, recognizes his daughter Maria, whom he lost when she was a child, in Amelia Grimaldi; Gabriele Adorno recognizes the father of his beloved in his political opponent, the Doge, whom he considers his rival in love and wishes to kill; whilst when the moment for revenge arrives Jacopo Fiesco is forced to recognize Amelia as his granddaughter. Everything is transformed in meaning and significance in the light of these thunderbolt-like recognitions. The first two of these scenes deflect the plot in a positive direction, and only the third suddenly deepens the sense of tragedy (by then Boccanegra is fatally dwindling from poison), common to all three scenes is a resigned experience of fate that is finally declaimed by Fiesco: "Perche mi splende il ver si tardi?-Why does the truth become clear so late?" These scenes are purely lyrical, and that lyricism culminates in the final scene, when the music opens out towards transcendence as the expiring Doge's soul aspires to heaven.
The authenticity of any performance of Boccanegra hinges, in point of fact, on whether it can rise to these scenes. It is greatly to Giuseppe Patané's credit that he, though more in his element when character and high drama are being forged, responded to those regions of the music with great sensitivity, and was able to lead both orchestra and singers into elevated spheres of transfigured lyricism. Lajos Miller is a hero of this recording too, evoking in Boccanegra, with equal authenticity, the resolute and-if one can say such a thing-inspired politician as well as the father who finds himself ranged against the politician. His vocal expressiveness springs from especial depth in Act 3, when the soul, sensing the ebbing bodily strength and turning within itself, is transformed into music. Next to Miller, it is Veronika Kincses who delivers the most. In conformity with her disposition, she mainly asserts the lyrical aspect of the role, the barcarole-like poetry that so frequently dominates the part, conveying at once a sea-shimmering proximity and a profoundly tender inner life, a female sensibility which can harness the inner and the outer, soul and landscape, in harmony. Yet there is nothing impressionistic about the manner in which she does this; Kincses shapes Verdi's lines with a legato and plasticity of Mozartian limpidity -exemplarily.
The pleasant surprise of this recording at the time it appeared was the Fiesco of József Gregor, and that is even truer today. The voice sounds unified, equalized and ample in all registers, and if it has to be admitted that the toughness of the figure-another man, like the Don Silva of Ernani, who is hewn from rock-is occasionally conveyed with some rawness of singing, it is still a matter of regret that this superbly gifted singer should have become typecast as a buffo bass and that a more serious dimension of his art was not manifested as strongly as his capabilities would have permitted. One of the recording's values, then, lies in its documenting Gregor's lesser known artistic persona, and most impressively at that. János B. Nagy's "concitato" singing style fortunately tallies with the embittered, hot-headed, rebellious figure of Gabriele Adorno, and the singer is able to convey the young man's naiveté, his well-intentioned fits of temper and noble pathos. The best moment of characterization, however, is how he captures Adorno's mortification after realizing that the Doge is not his beloved's seducer but her father-a mo-ment where B. Nagy's portrayal is profoundly suggestive and affecting. By de-monstrating an ability to meet the demands of this masterpiece, perhaps the least readily approachable, most contemplative and most lyrical of all Verdi's operas, this recording of Simon Boccanegra stands as one of Hungaroton's finest achievements.
I Lombardi is one of Verdi's works that was soon forgotten and long consigned to oblivion. Its rediscovery in more recent times stems from revivals in Rome in 1970, in 1974 in Budapest and, hot on its heels, the following year at London's Covent Garden, as well as a first recording under Lamberto Gardelli in 1972 (for Philips). It would be fair to say that the real breakthrough came with the Budapest production, which-over and beyond Gardelli's key role-redounds greatly to the credit of Hungary's operatic culture, as it rehabilitated a true masterpiece. The basic quandary on which the opera is predicated is the Dantean one of man's unquenchable desire for goodness and for love, "which moves heaven and every star". Nowhere else in the Italian operatic literature is this voiced so fervently and so forcefully as in this piece. The three principals in I Lombardi were conceived in precisely the spirit of this dilemma: the angelic figure of Giselda is none other than a personification of goodness, love and forgiveness, whilst Pagano, by the dramatic route of crime and punishment, and Oronte, by the good offices of love, come into fateful, mystic contact with her in order that both of them should, through her, participate in that total conversion in which earthly goodness and love and heavenly goodness and love become reflections of one another. I Lombardi is thus the most transcendental of Verdi's operas alongside La Forza del destino. It is a piece that perfectly suited the spirituality of Gardelli's latter years, arguably becoming, with the Requiem, the greatest achievement of his final period.
If the illumination and rapt exaltation of the Erkel Theatre performances did not quite transfer to the goldfish bowl of the studio, the transcendental dimension still comes across in the recording, thanks not only to the conductor, orchestra and chorus but also to three of the singers. Sylvia Sass, whose portrayal of Giselda earned great acclaim in Budapest and Covent Garden alike, is in inspired form in this recording. It is an extraordinarily taxing role, combining as its does the demands of a lyric soprano, a dramatic soprano and a coloratura soprano. Sass was able to identify with the role to the point of expanding her vocal capabilities. She has the right voice for every facet of the role, from the lyricism of the Act 1 "Salve Maria" through the tremendous pathos of the Act 2 Finale to the other-worldly ethereality of her Act 4 aria. Even if there may sometimes be a forcedness to the singing, as during the young woman's dramatic challenge when she is seeking to stay the world's madness in the Act 2 Finale, one does not necessarily feel that this is due to the singer's vocal limitation: it can be interpreted as a constraint of the role, for what we have here is a gentle soul taking upon herself a task that demands real heroism.
The figure of Pagano, great villain and great penitent, is perhaps the most rounded interpretation that Kolos Kováts de-livered in his singing career. The sheer complexity of the part-the initial despicable behaviour and blind, murderous passion later being overtaken by a desire for purification, a yearning for redemption out of faith, evangelical rapture and, finally, relief in salvation-brought the full scale of the singer's creative capabilities and reserves into play, and Kováts scaled exceptional heights of characterization. In this role his dark but richly nuanced, warm and homogeneous instrument achieved a consum-ma-tion of its values, and it is a part which the singer's marvellous breath control, his ability to husband his breath to give a continuous flow of sound through to the end of the long melodic lines, acquires artistic significance: in the monologue at the start of Act 2 and in the finale of Act 3, the Hermit's long phrases soar up to God in one unbroken sweep. It is gratifying that this first-rate but not always consistent singer's most complete interpretation should be preserved in its entirety on record.
The third outstanding individual achieve-ment is that of Giorgio Lamberti. Ad-mit-tedly, the voice evinces a more mature figure than the naive Oronte, youthful both in his love and in his longing for conversion (a role that Péter Kelen sang supremely well in the stage production), but the tonal and formal purity of his singing convey the nobility of soul which will be fulfilled in the baptism of the Muslim-born boy and Giselda's vision of heavenly apotheosis. The part of Arvino, Giselda's father and Pagano's brother, is likewise sung by an Italian, Ezio di Cesare, with a well-trained heroic tenor voice but with a younger bloom than is appropriate to a father role.
This recording of I Lombardi contributed back then, and still contributes, to the apprehension that this piece is not one of Verdi's "minor" works but has a rightful place amongst his masterpieces. Signs that this has finally been taken on board, after a long delay, include its subsequent mounting in Verona's Arena and a more recent Decca recording, brought out in 1997, though that-for all its stellar casting-does not begin to approach the spirit of the Hungaroton recording.
Macbeth was Verdi's first great creative encounter with Shakespeare, the dramatist he esteemed above all others. What is usually accentuated is the huge distance that separates this work, written as a young man (though Verdi did partially revise it later on), from the late Shakespeare-inspired masterpieces of Otello and Falstaff. What ought to be underscored just as much is that several of the work's passages-notably Macbeth's Act 1 scenes, both alone and with Lady Macbeth, and the Sleepwalking scene in Act 4-fully measure up to those later standards. For Gardelli this recording was not his first encounter with the work: he had already performed it at the Erkel Theatre in the early 1960s and even recorded it for Decca in 1971. The 1986 Hungaroton sessions show that the dramatic flair of his younger years lived on in, and could still be drawn on by, the more lyrical, serene Gardelli. Under him Macbeth does not have the feel of an elderly Maestro's performance: it is a tautly shaped, fiery, shattering drama.
A decisive hand in making it so, apart from the Hungarian State Orchestra's contribution, is played by the two principals, Piero Cappuccilli and Sylvia Sass. Cappuccilli had already recorded the part ten years previously under Abbado (for Deutsche Grammophon), and huskier though the voice may be in occasional passages, its expressive power is more intense, more extreme and more profound in the later production. The strength of this great baritone's portrayal is drawn from the rigour and self-containedness with which it is shaped, the solidity of the part's structure, with the singer breaking through that pure form towards prosodic verismo only now and again in a borderline situation, where a cry, an inarticulate outburst, reinforces the effect. It reinforces where a less discriminating application of this risky approach would have discredited both singer and role, for one of Cappuccilli's greatest artistic virtues lies in his infallible sense of proportion. Not that the primacy given to shaping means that all we get is sketchiness and structure: within the character sketch and structure, the singer precisely calibrates the inflection of every phrase and word, which greatly contributes to the plasticity of the interpretation. Cappuccilli's Macbeth is a large-scale, evocative figure both in his frenzies of activity and his slumps, poignant first in his intimation and later his recognition of his fate.
It is gratifying to be able to say that the great guest has a worthy partner in Sylvia Sass. The complexity and inner grandeur of the Lady Macbeth role inspired the singer to the utmost, pushing her to a peak of her artistry. We know that in this role Verdi considered accuracy and suggestiveness of diction, a speech-like shading of articulation and differentiated expression, more important than sheer vocal beauty. Sass is unrivalled in the thoroughness with which she worked out the role. She mixes the inflections of words and phrases with astounding subtlety and calculatedness, without letting the vocal characterization slip into mere details, because the individual points are held together in a tight line by the unity of a significant personality of major stature. The big, dark figure that is Sass's Lady Macbeth casts a tragic shadow on the entire performance, veritably radiating her will, yet she is not the entirely monstrous figure of so many other recordings but also a living, flesh-and-blood figure, which implies weakness and fragility as well, and this is revealed in the Sleepwalking scene. In Sass's performance this grows more organically out of the figure than is usually the case. Rather than try to take the likes of Leonie Rysanek, Birgit Nilsson, Fiorenza Cossotto or Shirley Verrett as models, she remains true here, as in other roles, to her longtime inspiration, Maria Callas, in her emulation of the responsiveness and inflection of the diva's Lady Macbeth portrayal. In the figure that she created strength and overweening will, human grandeur and human scale, fuse in a complex totality. Sass takes the principal female role on four of Hungaroton's Verdi recordings, and there is no doubt that she is at her best in the hardest of these, that of Lady Macbeth, with an achievement that measures up to the world class of the foreign artists. We can also hear great artistry in two smaller but still important roles: Kolos Kováts is quite superb as Banquo, whilst in the role of Macduff, which amounts to little more than a single, albeit fiendishly difficult, aria, Péter Kelen gives moving voice to his grief over the death of his children and the plight of the Scottish refugees suffering under despotism. This is a Macbeth that stands comparison with other sets, of which there are no few.
The last of Hungaroton's Verdi projects was Attila. This is one of the composer's early patriotic operas, inspired by his longing for a liberated Italy, but equally a product of the creative period that Verdi was to call his "years in the galley", when the Italian public was continually demanding one new work after another and he was unable to free his composing energies from external shackles. Attila is not, it has to be conceded, one of his great operas: much of the time it brings no more than the workaday musical idiom of Italian Romantic opera and, by then, of Verdi's own works; only in the occasional passage does it truly acquire substance and inspiration. Yet it still deserves some attention, if only on account of the title-role. Attila is one of the heroic monster figures of Italian opera, an heir of the title-part of Rossini's Maometto Secondo and the Henry VIII of Donizetti's Anna Bolena. His figure towers oppressively above the other roles and settles on them. He alone has any real character; the other figures are little more than silhouettes, with any psychology there is being invested in Odabella, daughter of the ruler of Aquileia, concealing her vengeance as she lives in Attila's entourage and almost wedding the Hun leader before she ultimately murders him.
With this recording of the opera Gardelli was, as it were, revisiting the Seventies, when he laid down a whole series of early Verdi operas, including Attila, for Philips. The by now ageing conductor reignites within himself the flames of Verdi's Risorgi-mento and manages to evoke this one more time with conviction. The singing laurels go unequivocally to Evgeni Nes-te-renko in the title-role. His perfectly trained, completely homogeneous and nobly toned bass succeeds in creating the monster without the least hint of coarseness in the vocal characterization. The perfection of the moulding and structuring, the evenness and fluency of the vocal delivery, evoke the powerful ruler because the singer's huge personality radiates out of the vocal presence at all times. A subtle part in this derives from Nesterenko being a Slavonic bass, without the voice being dominated by that guttural timbre which gives the great Russian and Bulgarian basses their special piquancy and impact; it is a timbre that is nevertheless present in the voice as a barely detectable inflection that unobtrusively reinforces it effect. But the grandeur of the figure is created by the combined suggestiveness of the significance of the singer's personality and the high degree of musicality of his shaping of the part-a reliance on purely musical means that Nesterenko abandons at only one point, the very end, when Odabella stabs Attila and in dying he groans "Et tu pure, Odabella?..." Yet even at this moment it is not so much the naturalism of the death that dominates as Attila's surprise, which gains weight from this exceptional effect.
Interestingly, Sylvia Sass sings with much more personal expressiveness in the rather simple and seemingly not overly inspiring role of Odabella than she did as the Elvira of Ernani. Her scene and love-song at the opening of Act 1, after the Prologue, is the finest passage of the entire record: here Gardelli and Sass, perfectly attuned and inspiring one another to music-making of an exalted order, scale true heights of operatic poetry. The sketchy role of Ezio, the Roman legionary commander, gives Lajos Miller no opportunity for rich or profound character portrayal, but all the more for a spirited and brilliant display of his flawless instrument. By comparison, on the set that EMI recorded two years later, Giorgio Zancanaro, regarded as the leading baritone of the day, struggles painfully to match up to this same role. Foresto, the knight from Aquileia, is sung by János B. Nagy, but this totally schematic figure truly offers the singer nothing more than a test of his general intonation, which the tenor is able to fulfil at a creditable standard. It is hardly likely that Attila will ever become a popular Verdi opera, but it is a work not entirely lacking in merit, so it is no bad thing that Hungaroton should have made it available in a world-class recording.
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Géza Fodor
is dramaturge at the Katona József Theatre in Budapest. He has published several collections of essays, many of them on music. He teaches at the Department of Aesthetics of Eötvös Loránd University and at the University of Drama and Film.
