In the 1950s and 1960s it was not uncommon for recordings of the Italian operatic repertory to be locally cast and produced, with plenty of gifted Italian singers and conductors for companies to draw on. Cetra sets were almost exclusively homegrown but so were many of the Decca, RCA and EMI recordings centred on Milan or Rome or Florence. This new account of Il barbiere recorded in a city very close to Rossini's career and affections, is in that tradition and it derives a good deal of sustenance from it. There is certainly an added point and vividness to the secco recitatives which are played out rather than scampered through. There is even a hint that the servant Ambrogio might be the yawning Wakeful we encounter in the Beaumarchais original, a character Rossini did not develop out of deference to Paisiello's success with the servants in his Il barbiere. With both the Almaviva and the Basilio proving to be very successful gramophone actors, Act 2 is a particular delight musically and theatrically. Most collectors will enjoy the added realism of some electronically purveyed thunder in the storm sequence and they will also probably be relieved to hear that the Count's big aria before the final vaudeville is cut. In the Bologna revival of 1816, Righetti-Giorgi, the Rosina, purloined it for herself. Successfully so, for the following year Rossini formally reworked the music into the role of Cenerentola which she created in Rome. That said, Bartoli makes no such presumption here; the aria, dramatically redundant, is simply banished.
Clearly, Bartoli's Rosina is going to be one of the set's talking-points. She is a talented and immensely personable singer with more dramatic vibrancy than some Rossinian mezzos we have had in recent years. She is also, even on record, alluringly youthful in manner. If there is a reservation to be made it must be about the musical interpretation, particularly in the cavatina, ''Unavoce poco fa'', where the final pages are rather lavishly and unevenly decorated. The young Adelina Patti did much the same thing before Rossini in Paris in the early 1860s and received a famous rebuke. Patti had been put up to it by her teacher, Maurice Strakosch. In Rossini's word she had been ''Strakoschonized'' and here it is not so much how Bartoli sings as what she has been encouraged to sing.
Nucci has recorded the role of Figaro under Chailly (CBS). As he showed on his recent bel canto recital disc (Decca (CD) 421 129-2DH, 12/88), he has some skills in music of this period and there are many agreeable details, both in the execution and the dramatization of the part on this new recording. That said, he doesn't strike me as a born Figaro. He may not be as menacing in the role as, years ago, Gino Bechi notoriously was, but I find him a good deal less ingratiating than Gobbi managed to be on the EMI set with Callas, conducted by Galliera. Burchuladze is also a slightly heavy-handed Basilio. ''La calunnia'' is back down in C where basses have invariably taken it. There is no harm in that but there have been more mordant Basilios on record. Enrico Fissore's Bartolo, by contrast, is excellent: skilfully sung, keenly acted, and capable of opening up several contrasting aspects of the old mentor's personality. Rossini built a lot of finely crafted comic detail into the portrait of Bartolo and Fissore is alive to most of it. He and the Almaviva William Matteuzzi, make a lot of their scenes together. By contrast, Matteuzzi's Act 1 duet with Nucci is a stop-go affair that lacks a proper rhythm.
This, in part, is the conductor's fault, of course. Patane does many excellent things. In the Act 1 finale the Rossini train sways safely over the points and there are such things as the brief moments of choral stasis nicely attended to. The orchestra tend to come and go rather, both in quality of playing and in actual physical presence but the real problem is the inconsistent pacing of some of the big arias and duets. Patane is also remarkably slow in the opera's opening scene giving the whole thing an unnaturally sluggish feel at the outset. With more consistent conducting—Marriner on Philips and Galliera on EMI are both superior—the elements might have come together rather better than they do on a set that is within hailing distance of being a success. As it is, I would find the Marriner the better, the Galliera the more irresistible buy; though one day EMI will surely put on to CD the old Glyndebourne set with los Angeles and Bruscantini and the most guileful conductor of them all, Vittorio Gui.'