Charm is an elusive thing; I doubt if it can be taught. Singers guilty of laying it on too thick – I could name one or two of today but won’t – might listen to Sayao and try to hear what she does, and just as important, what she doesn’t do. Take the contrast between Violetta and Mimi. In the Act 1 aria from La traviata, there is no smile in the voice. It’s all beautiful, limpid singing, but when she reaches that crucial “Follie!” recitative, there is no joy in the cries of “gioir!” but, as is surely correct, desperation. Then comes Mimi and the tone is at once warmer, full of the reticent hopefulness that is typical of the personality; when she gets to the climactic “Ma quando ven lo sgelo” she really lets it all glow. Strange that these two Parisian coughers are so often bracketed together – in fact their basic characters are quite different and in the subtlest way Sayao shows how a singer can differentiate without resorting to any distortion or method-acting tricks.
The revelation in this recital, for me, was Sayao’s Cherubino. Lord Harewood in his notes says that she probably never sang it on the stage, but she makes of the two overfamiliar arias something totally delicious and new. Her Susanna was well known and one of her favourite parts (with Pinza as her Figaro), but although she has no difficulty in singing the Countess’s aria, somehow one knows that the part isn’t quite right for her. Both the Zerlina arias are done with just the right mixture of coquetry and toughness.
Sayao sang Debussy’s La damoiselle elue in New York with Toscanini, the year before her Met debut in 1937. This recording, made in 1947 with Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, is a remarkable instance of her ability to invest words and vocal line with character. The French translation of Rossetti’s text makes the Blessed Damozel more than a little like her successor, “la princesse lointaine”, Melisande, another Sayao part.
In a recent interview, Sayao related how much she had wanted to sing Madam Butterfly but, although she felt she could have acted it, the orchestration was too heavy for her voice, and so she never dared take on the role. Her recording of “Un bel di” shows how she would have tackled it. Surprisingly, she did sing Nedda in Pagliacci, in her final season at San Francisco and she must have made an unusually sympathetic impression.
With its companion volume which I reviewed last year (5/97), this CD restores much of Sayao’s recorded legacy to the catalogue. She is one of the most consistently fascinating singers of this era at the Met, in the two decades surrounding the Second World War. The booklet, as with all these beautifully produced Masterworks reissues, has colour reproductions of early record sleeves and nostalgic photographs, including two of Sayao modelling a hat fashioned from a copy of her first LP.'