If my count is correct this makes the twenty-third version of this opera on my shelves, a fair comment on its steady increase in popularity over the past 30 years. By no means all of these sets are at present available – one surprisingly missing from the list is Solti’s earlier, 1973-4 account, reissued in Decca’s Grand Opera series in the early 1990s (3/91), now deleted. Company and conductor had decided to make another recording in conjunction with concert performances in London in 1994. No doubt the availability of a particularly strong cast influenced the decision.
The performance gains from the live ambience. Even the earlier version, which quite successfully simulates stage action, did not create the sense of occasion palpable here, with an audience obviously held in thrall by the performers and reacting sometimes with laughter, rather more often with applause at the end of numbers and acts. When Renee Fleming accomplishes both Fiordiligi’s arias and the beginning of the canon quartet in the Act 2 finale with such smooth tone, such carefully managed phrasing and a deal of feeling for the girl’s mixed emotions, a response is inevitable, and right, even if you may regret it on repeated hearings. As her more impetuous sister Dorabella, von Otter knows how to extract the most in vivid characterization from her arias and capitulates to Guglielmo’s advances with real feeling: she improves here, at least in terms of positive colouring of her words, on her reading for Marriner.
Frank Lopardo is a paragon of a Ferrando, possibly the finest of all on disc, partly because his supple tenor encompasses both the lyrical and heroic. The way he shapes and phrases “Un’aura amoroso” is a model in itself, surpassed only by his exquisite shading at “voglio a me” when Fiordiligi finally submits to Ferrando’s wooing: who would be able to resist such honeyed tone? Neither the technical difficulties of “Ah! lo veggio” nor the tessitura of “Tradito, schernito” trouble him, and his highly flavoured treatment of the recitative is a bonus.
In that he’s matched by Bar’s similar sense of fun for Guglielmo, until things turn emotionally nasty, when a touch of cynical bitterness is rightly to the fore. He is in his most suave and easy voice in both arias and duets. It is a boon to have Italians as Despina and Alfonso although, truth to tell, they are no better than their colleagues at using the text. In fact, Pertusi is not as successful as Bacquier on the earlier Solti set at suggesting Alfonso’s Machiavellian machinations by vocal means alone, nor does Scarabelli manage to etch her arias into the mind as did Berbie for Solti, or even better, Steffek in the 1962 Bohm version.
The Chamber Orchestra of Europe are definitely superior to the LPO, 1973 vintage (on the earlier Solti). Their playing is consistently lithe and pointed. Whether or not you like Solti’s interpretation, which is much the same as before, will depend on whether you approve of his high-powered, driven view of the score which leaves so little room for the yielding tempo and sensuous timbre called for at, for instance, Guglielmo’s “Non siate ritrosi”. Fast tempos, rhythmic insistence and exaggerated accentuation overlook the Neapolitan warmth conjured up by other conductors. Even more troubling, and that may have something to do with the venue, is the sense of a large-scale drama where intimacy is surely of the essence.
These strictures were in my mind even before I turned to comparisons. Gardiner, not known to be especially responsive in that respect, is more yielding. His whole approach is better attuned to this piece, not least because period instruments impart a lighter, more flexible tone to the playing. Turn to Oestman (7/86 – nla) and you hear an even subtler approach, what SS has so rightly called a “convincing sense of style... and sweetness of orchestral sound”. But even with conventional instruments a greater sense of warmth and intimacy can be achieved, as the classic Bohm version amply shows. If that EMI set now reveals its age where orchestral sound is concerned, it has as grateful a recording of voices as any – and what voices they remain.
Decca have opted for a relatively recessed treatment of the singers, as though heard from midway back in the Festival Hall stalls, a fault not in evidence on the earlier Solti nor on the rival versions I have chosen this time for comparison. When I came to contrast the vocal performances I found the women on the new set, for all their merits, lacking the individuality of the best of their predecessors. To listen to Yakar (Oestman) or Schwarzkopf (Bohm) as Fiordiligi is to hear words and tone employed to create character, and in Yakar’s case the advantage, as mentioned again by SS, of appoggiaturas. Nafe (Oestman) and Berganza (Solti I), with their sunny Spanish tone and dispositions, make von Otter sound a shade lean. Ludwig (Bohm) is simply hors concours in sheer vocal opulence, though in some ways I prefer the choice of a soprano Dorabella made by Mackerras and Gardiner as being more appropriate in suggesting sisterly connections.
If you don’t mind Solti’s ultra-disciplined conducting and the large scale of the performance, you’ll find much to enjoy in the singing, and a real sense of fun – like listening to a good broadcast. For me, though not for SS, the empty-hall acoustics of the stylistically impeccable Mackerras set rules it out; nor is the singing there quite on a par with that in this new version. The Gardiner is a winning ensemble performance, although when making comparisons this time I felt that much of the singing is surpassed by that on the new version, even more elsewhere.
For a period-instrument performance I would definitely choose Oestman (which demands reissue), if one doesn’t mind fastish speeds. His exemplary cast, ideally directed by the late, lamented Peter Wadland, boasts in Winbergh a Ferrando almost in the Lopardo class, excellent ladies and in Feller an Alfonso in better voice than for Gardiner. Bohm is still very much in the frame. His loving care for texture and co-ordinated tempos bespeak a lifetime’s experience of the work, and the singers (listen particularly to Taddei’s smiling, suave Guglielmo) come across the years as an ensemble hard to match in style and tone – masterminded by Walter Legge. The loss of one aria, Ferrando’s second, can be easily borne, particularly when the set is available at mid price. And don’t forget that another live recording, under Rattle, is just over the horizon.'