Three Tragic Operas
GUREWITSCH, M. ANATOLE
On Music THREE TRAGIC OPERAS by m. anatole gurewitsch the last act of Giacchino Rossini's Otello (1816), there is a celebrated moment when a voice from afar steals into the chamber of the...
...The result is a series of truly outstanding performances...
...A pity, too, that Domingo's rich performance could not have been made the core of a new production...
...Domingo's interpretation was released on disc under the direction of James Levine, (RCA CRL3-2951...
...they well up inexorably like Lear's hysteria passio in the play...
...Arrigo Boito's libretto, a mas-tervvork in its own right, wisely translates the resplendent originality of Shakespeare's language into a simpler poetic diction...
...At the Met, Domingo's Otello was even more enthralling than his recording...
...The evil sisters Goneril (Helga Der-nesch) and Regan (Colette Lorand) are immediately differentiated by their vocal types: The first is a chilling dramatic soprano...
...But when they comment on their younger sister's banishment, they chime away together on a single note...
...Fischer-Dieskau excels in a role that trades more on the insight of his declamation than on his accomplishments as a singer...
...The producers also score a real casting coup with the lago of Gianfranco Pastine and the Rodrigo of Salvatore Fisichella, neither of whose names is exactly a household word, but both of whom are well able to hold their own in the unlikely ensemble of three principal male leads, all (to varying degrees) coloratura tenors...
...Yet despite the rough going, the leads manage to rise to the challenge...
...Throughout the work, Reimann delivers strikes that reveal his musical originality and keen dramatic sense...
...Still, the efforts of the men add up to very little in the context of this most foolish entertainment that for two acts reduces Shakespeare's towering passions to puny cliche...
...it is as remarkable for its dramatics as for its musicality...
...Except when he was writing words for music, the Bard was no lyricist...
...he breaks the most exposed phrases unconventionally...
...In Aribert Reimann's Lear, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau stands not only at the core of a new production, but of a new opera-A singing actor's supreme satisfaction...
...In younger days, he sang the lighter supporting role of Cassio (to Mc-Cracken's Otello) in Mexico City...
...Von Stade's success is not the end of the good news about the new recording, but it is the only good news that matters in the final account...
...he does not send them, as Shakespeare does, to the remote isle of Cyprus, where their fate is played out...
...Rejoice...
...As Glos-ter, "the king's reflection," Hans Giinter Nocker demonstrates his worthiness to stand opposite his illustrious counterpart...
...the second is a soprano of lighter heft who moves in wider intervals, restlessly jumping...
...He is the first of the Met Otellos to abandon ship for the Esultate...
...America's exposure to this powerful opera comes with the release of the complete recording, taped live last year in Germany (Deutsche Grammo-phon 2709 089...
...On a Philips recital album (9500 098), Frederica von Stade performed the lovely "Willow Song" and "Ave Maria" from the opera...
...The continuity from one moment of intensity to another, however, is too fractured to yield any persuasive dramatic structure, and the moments themselves are not so thrilling as to compensate for the lags between them...
...The work's premiere was held in Munich in July 1978...
...Levine, of course, is at the helm of the Metropolitan's performances, and the admirable recording was a kind of preview of the fall offering...
...The opening scenes pitch the volume of the orchestra to the very threshold of listening agony, and the singer's larynxes are brutalized by the arduous vocal lines...
...Though far less punishing, much the same is true of the title part of Hindemith's Mathis der Maler, another new entry this month, on Angel SZCX-3869, where Fischer-Dieskau gives one more demonstration of his matchless musical intellect...
...The title role calls for immense stamina and is notoriously hard to cast, yet Verdi's Otello has been a regular repertoire piece at the Metropolitan for over a decade and has been performed at an unusually consistent level of distinction...
...The play, for all its horrors, is also gorgeous, while the opera is not...
...Countertenor David Knut-son is excellent as Edgar, the disinherited son who feigns madness in off-the-wall melismas...
...The musical jollity of the opera's early parts is admittedly interrupted from time to time by spots of deep expressivity-mostly Desdemona's-And some of the ensembles exhibit an agreeable bell-canto weave of alternating voices within the strict confines of repeated words and phrases...
...it is tremendous and austere...
...Placido Domingo, who made his New York debut in the part this season at the September opening night gala, is their brilliant successor...
...A broken phrase of Domingo's does not sound like your conventional fit of gasping...
...In their contempt, they agree...
...Besides, Domingo's accomplishment is by no means only a vocal one...
...Rossini's librettist, Francesco Maria Berio, keeps his actors in Venice...
...He first took the title role in Paris under George Solti, but when the Paris production was seen in the U.S., it starred Carlo Cossutta, who is the Otello on Solti's gripping recording (London OSA-13130...
...True, Jose Carreras acquits himself admirably in the florid role of Otello, even if the part lies a shade too low for his comfort...
...and his mute incantation before the bedside of his sleeping wife, whom he has come to murder, is as noble as it is savage...
...The detail that the unseen singer is a gondolier may be taken as a symbol of greater matters...
...On Music THREE TRAGIC OPERAS by m. anatole gurewitsch the last act of Giacchino Rossini's Otello (1816), there is a celebrated moment when a voice from afar steals into the chamber of the despairing Desdemona and intones a fragment from Dante...
...The few measures, shrouded in mist of trembling strings, steep the stage in sudden mystery and momentarily raise the opera to the plane it professes to occupy-lyric tragedy...
...A pity that the hyperactive Sherrill Milnes, who sang strongly as his villainous ensign, could not have learned from Domingo's example the eloquence of discretion...
...It is the heart's evil that provokes the percussion concerti...
...Listeners without German may find Reimann's Lear inaccessible...
...Yet in its conjuring of desolation and cruelty, this new work surely captures one vital aspect of Shakespeare's inexhaustible creation...
...And now the same label has released the complete work (6769 023), with Von Stade again performing Desdemona...
...he is stronger where his hand is lighter...
...But the Nessim maggior do-lore that is so instrumental in setting the scene shows how distant Othello and Rossini's Otello remain...
...But Domingo is not content to go through life in such comfortable roles as, say, Gounod's Faust (which I mention because he has just recorded it, beautifully, on Angel SZDX-3868), and he has the kind of artistry that can surpass limitations...
...Who is to say that Shakespeare would not have recognized his own spirit in Reimann...
...The printed matter included with the album is the program of the world premiere, and it contains even more commentary and information than the usual DG brochure, but none of it is translated...
...The segments are distinct yet dovetailed...
...Domingo is no newcomer to the opera...
...The house has been fortunate in its tenors: James McCrack-en-who for years practically owned the part of the Moor-And Jon Vickers both could be counted on for commanding performances of explosive passion...
...The highlights of her part are unquestionably enhanced by the foreboding setting, although Jesus Lope/ Cobos, at the head of the Philarmonic Orchestra and Ambrosian Opera Chorus, leads these treasurable pages of the score with perhaps too heavy a show of soulfulness...
...But Rossini's gondolier's song, Nessum maggiordo-lore, is familiar as arranged by Franz Liszt in his panoramic piano collection A twees de pelegrinage, and by reputation...
...The brawling of nature is represented with surprising gentleness-indeed at times by no more than a string quartet...
...Perhaps, by nature, he is not ideally suited for the Otello assignment: His supple instrument does not have the clarion thrust to cleave the unbridled clamor of the orchestra in full cry...
...We may suspect that he preferred to launch into the music at the footlights, where his voice would carry more forcefully, but his vigor also makes the entrance an electrifying visual event...
...here, for a sublime moment, Rossini's music and Shakespeare's design do converge...
...His overall portrayal is likewise distinctive, made up of deep stillnesses and lofty extravagance...
...Further, the score does not lend itself to picking out the good tunes...
...Verdi's masterpiece, by contrast, hurtles straight to the center and stays there...
...In recent years, we have come tanta-lizingly close to actually hearing the original Otello...
...Boito provided a shipshape drama nobly expressed, and left it to Verdi to swell its sails with the breath of grandeur and rhapsody...
...His prose and blank verse are not scaled to the articulation of a singing voice: the metered movement of thought is too various, too knotty, too detailed, and the movement of phrase too prodigal...
...The enduring fame of the passage is curious, for Rossini's Otello was almost completely eclipsed by Verdi's incomparably greater work on the same subject, which premiered amid immense fanfare in 1887...
...The "Willow Song" stands apart...
...Reimann's achievement is most impressive, though, in his orchestral interludes...
...In this external, as well as in spirit, Rossini's bel-canto vehicle never approaches the threshold, let alone the center, of Shakespearean Culmination...
...There is a beautiful dignity to his composure as he listens to Iago ensnaring him with lies...
...Claus H. Hen-neberg's libretto is a Brechtian reduction of the play, more than a trifle schematic in structure and blunt in diction to the point of harshness...
...the tremendous proclamation at the opening of his terrifying role...
Vol. 62 • November 1979 • No. 22
