Giuseppe Di Stefano Sings VERDI and PUCCINI – with Maria Callas, Licia Albanese, Victoria de los Angeles, Leonard Warren, Tito Gobbi & others – Nimbus Prima Voce (2 CDs)

by | Sep 22, 2009 | Classical Reissue Reviews | 0 comments

Giuseppe Di Stefano Sings VERDI and PUCCINI = VERDI: Un Ballo in Maschera–5 Scenes; Rigoletto: 4 Scenes; La Traviata: 3 Scenes; Il Trovatore: Quale d’armi fragor.. .Ah si ben mio. . .Di quella pira; PUCCINI: La Boheme: 5 Scenes; Madama Butterfly: Bimba dagli occhi pieni malia; Lo so che alsue pene; Tosca: Dammi I colori. . .Recondita armonia; Mario! Mario! E Lucevan le stelle – Eugenia Ratti, soprano/Maria Callas, soprano/ Antonietta Stella, soprano/Licia Albanese, soprano/Victoria de los Angeles, soprano/ Leonard Warren, baritone/Nicola Moscona, bass/Patrice Munsel, soprano/Fedora Barbieri, mezzo-soprano/ Tito Gobbi, baritone/Nicola Zaccaria, bass/Silvio Malonica, bass/George Cehanovsky, baritone/Anna Maria Canoli, mezzo-soprano

Nimbus Prima Voce NI 7957/8 (2 CDs), 76:16, 72:04 [Distr. by Allegro] ****:

The voice of tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano (1921-2008) thrilled lovers of opera (and Neapolitan song) for virtually five decades, from his 1943 debut as “Nino Florio” until his retirement from the stage in 1992. Along with Bjoerling, Wunderlich, Tucker, and Corelli, Di Stefano mesmerized the musical public with his vocal stamina and his ringing high notes, which he projected with clarion authority, his enunciation impeccable and dramatic coloring entirely flexible to meet the requirements of the roles he embraced with handsome authority. His long association, musical and romantic, with Maria Callas (from 1951) earned the epithet “the Musical Marriage made in Heaven.” A lyric tenor by nature, Di Stefano may have abused his voice through overzealous reaching–an open-voice technique–to roles more suited to the spinto and forza repertory, and by the love of the high life which too often threw the delicate balance of his physique and voice into disrepair. But at the height of his career, when singer and song congealed, the aromatic power of his vocal line had few peers and no superiors.

The opera excerpts offered in this Nimbus collation embrace performances Di Stefano gave 1950-1956, when the bloom of his voice had a pearly throttle, as in the extended scene from Il Trovatore, a role many would proffer as a true test of the lyrico-spinto tenor’s durability. Perhaps at the very top of Manrico’s Di quella pira we can detect a slight strain where Bjoerling could gather up his chest tone into a fireball. Still, Di Stefano’s exalted, sustained high notes do not break and rather communicate a passionate ardor that verges on mania, all under the wickedly driven direction of Herbert von Karajan. In Riccardo’s music from Un Ballo in Maschera, 1956 under Antonio Votto, we hear that natural, Mediterranean  airiness that marks his mature style and qualifies him as the natural heir to Gigli, what connoisseurs call “slancio.” His legato has a consummate finesse, especially in the aria “Forse le soglia. . .ma se m’e forza” with Callas. The ballata “Di tu si fedele” sways with tender sensuality. The immaculate character of his La Traviata excerpts with Antonietta Stella (conducted Serafin, 1955) communicate the ardor of a first infatuation, its drunken abandon and its ineffable mystery.  For Rigoletto’s unrepentant rake, the Duke of Mantua, Di Stefano projects that insincere, unctuous quality that seduces Gilda and reveals his innate misogyny.

The five excerpts from Puccini’s La Boheme (1950, conducted Cellini) derive from an LP long dear to my ears, RCA LM 1709, whose cast merged almost as beautifully as the more famous Beecham inscription with Bjoerling and de los Angeles. The recording literally celebrates Di Stefano’s early appearances at the MET (1948 debut). Poetry and romance suffuse Rodolfo‘s “Che gelida manina” and consummate in the love-duet, “O soave fanciulla,” with the seamless support of soprano Licia Albanese. The Act III quartet, “Dunque e proprio finite?” has Albanese, Leonard Warren, Patrice Munsel, and Di Stefano in recondite harmony, a delicate scherzo in layered accents and amorous, even exuberant, counterpoint. The sad finale to the opera, “Sono andati” melts to the Tragic Muse, with Albanese the soul of frail vulnerability, and Di Stefano’s yearning wants, like Orpheus, to melt Pluto’s heart and wring forth iron tears.

We have but fifteen minutes of the 1954 Madam Butterfly under Gavazzeni, but the opening love-scene from Act I convinces even the unworthy Pinkerton of the authenticity of his desire for Cio Cio San (Victoria de los Angeles).  Their night of love and imminent betrayal concludes with dirge-like tones that Gavazzeni punctuates with a grim authority that few, excepting Mitropoulos, could fuse so convincingly to erotic ecstasy. The Act II trio casts Di Stefano with Tito Gobbi and Anna Maria Canoli, with Pinkerton now disabused of his destructive conviction that his relationship with Butterfly was merely a token marriage. “Take care,” warns the adamant Sharpless (Gobbi).

Finally, the greatest recording in the Di Stefano legacy, his 1953 La Scala Tosca with Callas and the amazing Victor de Sabata at the helm. Romance, heroism, aesthetic and personal ardor–every nuance of these varied emotions resonates most persuasively from Di Stefano–brilliant, etched in musical jade. With Callas in their extended duet, “Mario! Mario!” the elements of romantic despair and desperation palpably color their plaints, Callas’ Tosca loving but undeniably tainted by fierce jealousy. The last scenes, in which Cavaradossi awaits execution, ring with the tragic power of wasted youth, of love betrayed. The diminuendi and sudden accelerations in “E Lucevan le stelle” immortalizes Di Stefano even if had never sung another note. Rudolf Bing stated, “Di Stefano’s lack of self-discipline. . .harmed what might have been a career that would be remembered with Caruso’s.” This set belies Bing’s pronouncement, asserting that Caruso and Di Stefano do in fact commune in the same musical Pantheon.

— Gary Lemco

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