As was promised at the end of September, my account of Sony Classical’s Birgit Nilsson: The Great Live Recordings, released in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Nilsson’s birth, will conclude by considering the recordings of operas by composers other than Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss.This amounts to only three works: Béla Bartók’s “Bluebeard’s Castle,” Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fidelio. Each is a relatively weak link in the overall chain, but each still deserves consideration.
Most interesting is the Bartók offering, a one-act opera whose duration of less than 50 minutes requires only a single CD. The recording was made on February 11, 1953 in the Stockholm Concert Hall, suggesting that this was probably not a staged performance. The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Ferenc Fricsay. The title role is taken by bass-baritone Bernhard Sönnerstedt with Nilsson as Bluebeard’s new wife Judith. (These are the only characters in the opera.) The libretto is sung in German, rather than the original Hungarian.
The primary virtue of this recording is its historical significance. This is the earliest live performance of a complete opera in the Sony collection. Nilsson was 34 years old at the time, and her career had already been solidly established. However, her reputation was, for those most part, confined to Stockholm; and many of the roles that would figure significantly in her international reputation were first sung in Swedish. There is a good chance that “Bluebeard’s Castle” was sung in German because a Swedish libretto had not yet been prepared.
Fricsay himself was Hungarian, and he was probably a guest conductor for this Stockholm concert. Bartók had been his teacher; and, over the course of his career, he made several recordings of Bartók’s music, each with a solid stamp of authority. If one overlooks the German text, one can certainly grant such authority to this recording. Sönnerstedt is more baritone than bass, which means that his Bluebeard is more lyrical than menacing; but this establishes a context in which Judith does not know what is in store for her has she opens the different doors in the castle. Nilsson’s voice is as solid in this performance as it will be in all of the recordings that follow this one in the Sony box. Those of us who cannot get enough of this opera (including myself) are likely to enjoy it even in the absence of the Hungarian text.
The recording of Fidelio also seems to have been made at a concert performance. This one was made on March 17, 1970 at the RAI (Radiotelevisione italiana) studio in Rome. The studio chorus and orchestra are conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Nilsson’s Leonore is complemented by tenor Ludovic Spiess as Florestan and bass-baritone Theo Adam as Don Pizarro. Because the recording was made at a concert, almost all of the spoken dialogue (except for the melodrama in the second act) is omitted.
This may be the most problematic recording in the Sony collection. As usual, Bernstein is not quite the authority on Beethoven that he liked to make himself out to be; but the score itself is not the stuff from which silk purses can be woven. Nevertheless, what is most surprising is that the overall audio quality is far more disappointing than what is encountered in most of the recordings made during staged opera performances. One gets the impression that none of the participants were particularly enthusiastic about the project, which means that attentive listeners are likely to come away feeling the same way.
Similar audio problems are encountered in the Turandot recording, which was taken from a matinee radio broadcast (back in the days when Texaco sponsored those broadcasts) from the Metropolitan Opera House on March 4, 1961. This is the only opportunity in the collection to listen to Nilsson singing in Italian; and her account of the title character rises to the level of blood-curdling. To some extent that may have been the influence of conductor Leopold Stokowski (of all people). However, just as important are the ways in which Nilsson provides such sharp contrast to tenor Franco Corelli in the role of The Unknown Prince.
Leopoldo Metlicovitz’ 1926 promotional poster for Turandot (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
However, when it comes to the chemistry between Nilsson and Corelli, I have to confess that I prefer the recording made on December 7, 1964 for a gala performance at La Scala (where the opera was performed for the first time). Like the Met recording, the technology is not up to studio standards. Nevertheless, the La Scala engineers came up with better balancing of all the resources than those behind the Met broadcast. On the other hand Stokowski’s approach to Puccini definitely comes off as far more satisfying than Bernstein’s approach to Beethoven!
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