When I first heard Norma at Covent Garden in 1952, I have to confess (if confession it be) that it was the glorious and solid tones of Stignani that impressed me more than anything achieved by Callas, whose qualities became clear to me when she repeated Norma in the following season. Sitting in the Amphitheatre, I found that Stignani flooded the house with the sheer power of her voice at her first entry—an affect reflected here in the same passage from the preferable of her two complete accounts of Adalgisa's music. She hardly looked the youthful priestess; indeed, she looked by then like Callas's comfortable aunt but who cared?
In her young days, as the photo on the front of this Preiser issue indicates, she was blessed with typically Italianate dark looks and full, sensuous features, seconding the voice we hear on the 1937 recordings here, possibly her best. At that time, when she was in her early thirties, it was quite flawless throughout its register and used with a delicacy we don't necessarily associate with the singer familiar from her 1950 LPs. Try the solo from Linda di Chamounix, the Styrienne from Mignon or Dalila's ''Printemps qui commence''—the latter two sung in Italian—if you want to hear what I mean. In Dalila's more sinister, second solo, we now hear the sheer strength and determination she could bring to her music, confirmed by the blinding performance of ''O don fatale'' in 1940, none better of this fiendishly taxing aria. Here all the high notes, with the piece sung at original pitch, are fearlessly hit, dead centre. Nothing like that can be heard today, nor indeed in the other Verdi parts, and for a singer sometimes accused of being placid in temperament nothing is held back in ''Stride la vampa''. As a contrast there is the gentle stroking of Beppe's lovely solo from L'amico Fritz, a recording new to me and essential Stignani.
Where today's mezzos can better Stignani is in Gluck and Rossini. Both the arias from the older composer's operas are too heavily delivered and in Semiramide's ''Ah! quel giorno'' she tends to be clumsy, aspirating her runs. But once past these early tracks, you will be rewarded with a sumptuous display of grand, spirited, flexible singing, faithfully recorded and transferred.'