Non ti scordar di te
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Label: Bel Canto Society
Magazine Review Date: 1/1997
Media Format: Video
Media Runtime: 94
Mastering:
Mono
Catalogue Number: BCS0656
Label: Bel Canto Society
Magazine Review Date: 1/1997
Media Format: Video
Media Runtime: 57
Mastering:
Mono
Catalogue Number: BCS0662
Label: Bel Canto Society
Magazine Review Date: 1/1997
Media Format: Video
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
Mono
Catalogue Number: BCS0657
Label: Bel Canto Society
Magazine Review Date: 1/1997
Media Format: Video
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
Mono
Catalogue Number: BCS0504
Label: Bel Canto Society
Magazine Review Date: 1/1997
Media Format: Video
Media Runtime: 0
Catalogue Number: BCS0511
Author: Alan Blyth
As diligent readers of Gramophone will have noticed, the Bel Canto Society have been offering opera lovers interested in the past a series of historic videos that look enticing. Of the five I have sampled, three comprise films from the 1930s enshrining the art of Beniamino Gigli (two) and Tito Schipa (one). At that period famous singers appeared regularly in films to spread their popularity. Each shows the direct, unsophisticated appeal of these two feted artists, suggesting the power of the tenor voice to cure most ills.
Gigli is cast twice, in his first and second films, Non ti scordar di me (issued in England as “Forget me not”) and Ave Maria, as a middle-aged singer who has recently lost his wife. In the first he marries a young girl who’s on the rebound from an affair and remains faithful to him (just) when her lover returns – again through the appeal of his voice. In the second his singing wins him the love of a cabaret artist who has been inveigled into conning him. In both Gigli has ample opportunities to deploy his art, the true, honest quality of his singing saving him and the plot from sentimentality.
One gains a wonderful idea of the disarming simplicity and generosity of the man which wholly exonerates him from a charge of ham acting. The voice itself pours out of him in that well-known, heartfelt manner, uniquely his, the honeyed mezza voce a thing to wonder at. In Ave Maria, Erna Berger joins him in short extracts from La traviata. Infuriatingly the cameras, frightened perhaps that we may tire of watching a singer perform, draw away to show us adoring women in the audience or whatever. If you want just one example of Gigli, go for Non ti scordar di me, which has an enchanting heroine and a delightfully natural boy actor as Gigli’s son in support of the lovable tenor.
I Sing for You Alone (1935), the first of Schipa’s ten films, is also in English, though there were French and Italian versions. The plot is zany to the point of incomprehensibility, but there are enough chances to hear Schipa’s delicate, unadorned style. He too portrays a tenor; he too has all the women at his feet; he too is a dab hand at portraying a kind of artless, endearing charm. Even more than the Gigli films, this a period piece and a charming one.
Tito Gobbi is another singer whose art is well preserved on film. The 1946 Pagliacci features him as both Tonio and Silvio and was an early attempt to film on location, pre-echoing Zeffirelli in this work. The sultry Gina Lolobrigida was engaged to play Nedda to Onelia Fineschi’s excellent singing. Oddly the baritone Afro Poli mimed Canio to the dramatic tenor Galiano Masini’s superbly accented singing (“Vesti la giubba” impassioned and long-breathed). Gobbi gives an object-lesson in line and style in the Prologue, then goes way over the top as Tonio before adding a handsomely sung and convincingly acted Silvio. Giuseppe Morelli conducts Rome forces.
As an hors d’oeuvre to Pagliacci Bel Canto give us a 25-minute gambol through William Tell in an incredibly hammy staging. Gobbi in the title-role isn’t even allowed his aria, but we do gain something of the legendary Gabriella Gatti’s class in the first verse of “Selva opaca”. An American commentator fills in the plot. The whole thing is bizarre.
On the other hand, Rossini, an Italian biograph of 1943, is well worth reviving. It has something of the flavour of the recently deceased Marcel Carne’s masterpiece, Les Enfants du Paradis in that it portrays its era and particularly its country in human, highly coloured tints. Like its French counterpart, it uses a host of character actors to portray, winningly, Rossini’s colleagues and contemporaries, and has crowd scenes that are vivid and finely directed. Both Nino Besozzi as Rossini (a good likeness) and Paola Barbara as Colbran give performances that ring true.
However it’s disappointing to find that famous singers listed on the case make only brief appearances. Even so it’s a pleasure to see, even fleetingly, Stabile as Figaro, Pasero as Basilio and Pederzini as Rosina. Gatti is heard, all too briefly, as Desdemona. The film shows Rossini triumphing in Naples, Rome, Vienna (where he meets a romanticized Beethoven) and Paris from Barbiere to Tell. I thoroughly enjoyed this offering and wished it had gone on longer than its 94 minutes.
On all these offerings the pictures are in fairly dim black and white with sound that is tolerable but no more, best perhaps in the Gigli films.'
Gigli is cast twice, in his first and second films, Non ti scordar di me (issued in England as “Forget me not”) and Ave Maria, as a middle-aged singer who has recently lost his wife. In the first he marries a young girl who’s on the rebound from an affair and remains faithful to him (just) when her lover returns – again through the appeal of his voice. In the second his singing wins him the love of a cabaret artist who has been inveigled into conning him. In both Gigli has ample opportunities to deploy his art, the true, honest quality of his singing saving him and the plot from sentimentality.
One gains a wonderful idea of the disarming simplicity and generosity of the man which wholly exonerates him from a charge of ham acting. The voice itself pours out of him in that well-known, heartfelt manner, uniquely his, the honeyed mezza voce a thing to wonder at. In Ave Maria, Erna Berger joins him in short extracts from La traviata. Infuriatingly the cameras, frightened perhaps that we may tire of watching a singer perform, draw away to show us adoring women in the audience or whatever. If you want just one example of Gigli, go for Non ti scordar di me, which has an enchanting heroine and a delightfully natural boy actor as Gigli’s son in support of the lovable tenor.
I Sing for You Alone (1935), the first of Schipa’s ten films, is also in English, though there were French and Italian versions. The plot is zany to the point of incomprehensibility, but there are enough chances to hear Schipa’s delicate, unadorned style. He too portrays a tenor; he too has all the women at his feet; he too is a dab hand at portraying a kind of artless, endearing charm. Even more than the Gigli films, this a period piece and a charming one.
Tito Gobbi is another singer whose art is well preserved on film. The 1946 Pagliacci features him as both Tonio and Silvio and was an early attempt to film on location, pre-echoing Zeffirelli in this work. The sultry Gina Lolobrigida was engaged to play Nedda to Onelia Fineschi’s excellent singing. Oddly the baritone Afro Poli mimed Canio to the dramatic tenor Galiano Masini’s superbly accented singing (“Vesti la giubba” impassioned and long-breathed). Gobbi gives an object-lesson in line and style in the Prologue, then goes way over the top as Tonio before adding a handsomely sung and convincingly acted Silvio. Giuseppe Morelli conducts Rome forces.
As an hors d’oeuvre to Pagliacci Bel Canto give us a 25-minute gambol through William Tell in an incredibly hammy staging. Gobbi in the title-role isn’t even allowed his aria, but we do gain something of the legendary Gabriella Gatti’s class in the first verse of “Selva opaca”. An American commentator fills in the plot. The whole thing is bizarre.
On the other hand, Rossini, an Italian biograph of 1943, is well worth reviving. It has something of the flavour of the recently deceased Marcel Carne’s masterpiece, Les Enfants du Paradis in that it portrays its era and particularly its country in human, highly coloured tints. Like its French counterpart, it uses a host of character actors to portray, winningly, Rossini’s colleagues and contemporaries, and has crowd scenes that are vivid and finely directed. Both Nino Besozzi as Rossini (a good likeness) and Paola Barbara as Colbran give performances that ring true.
However it’s disappointing to find that famous singers listed on the case make only brief appearances. Even so it’s a pleasure to see, even fleetingly, Stabile as Figaro, Pasero as Basilio and Pederzini as Rosina. Gatti is heard, all too briefly, as Desdemona. The film shows Rossini triumphing in Naples, Rome, Vienna (where he meets a romanticized Beethoven) and Paris from Barbiere to Tell. I thoroughly enjoyed this offering and wished it had gone on longer than its 94 minutes.
On all these offerings the pictures are in fairly dim black and white with sound that is tolerable but no more, best perhaps in the Gigli films.'
Rossini
Tito Schipa in I Sing for You Alone
Gobbi in I Pagliacci
Non ti scordar di te
Ave Maria
Discover the world's largest classical music catalogue with Presto Music.
Gramophone Digital Club
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Full website access
From £8.75 / month
Subscribe
Gramophone Full Club
- Print Edition
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Full website access
From £11.00 / month
Subscribe
If you are a library, university or other organisation that would be interested in an institutional subscription to Gramophone please click here for further information.