For many years, Salzburgers always affected surprise whenever an Italian opera was proposed for their festival, particularly if an Austrian- or German-born conductor was at the helm. It happened in Karajan’s time and in Furtwangler’s, and way back in Bruno Walter’s. But, then, it was Walter who had sold the pass in the first place, in the first fully-fledged festival in 1925, when he conducted – of all things – Donizetti’s Don Pasquale. In the years immediately following the Second World War it was all quiet on the Italian front until Furtwangler announced that he proposed to conduct Otello at the 1951 Festival. The world was taken by the ears, much as it had been in 1933 when, defying Bayreuth’s hegemony, Bruno Walter conducted Tristan in Salzburg.
Since Furtwangler was both a great man and a jealous child, I have no doubt that when he took on Otello he had Toscanini, hero of pre-war Salzburg, in his sights. In the event, the 1951 Salzburg Otello did nothing more than re-establish the fact that both of them were great conductors and that a masterpiece of the order of magnitude of Otello can have light thrown on it from several angles.
Furtwangler’s view is of a sickeningly claustrophobic domestic drama played out under heaven’s implacable gaze. It is as dark a view of the score as Barbirolli’s (HMV, 10/69 – issued by EMI on CD) or Karajan’s (Decca, 3/87; EMI, 4/88), though more earthbound than either, denying effulgence. As such, it is superbly ‘painted’ on the orchestra. But, more than that, it is a formidably well directed performance. Tempos suit the actions and actions suit the tempos in a reading that moves pretty well unerringly towards the drama’s most terrible moments.
If I sound a note of qualification there, it is because this is a live performance with its own inevitable ups and downs. There is nothing much amiss in Acts 1 and 2 (apart from a slow tempo and flabby pulse in “Ora e per sempre”). In Act 3, though, and to some extent in Act 4, the public end is far more powerfully realized than the private beginning.
As to the singing, Furtwangler seems as much interested in verbal truth as vocal beauty, which is a problem when the Iago of Paul Schoeffler has at best a somewhat approximate grasp of the nitty-gritty of the Italian text. The Desdemona, the Yugoslav-born soprano Dragica Martinis does much better. Ironically, given the rivalry between the two men, she was a Karajan discovery. She had sung Aida under his direction in February 1951 and was later to sing Donna Anna in his La Scala Don Giovanni. Because her career was short-lived and her name not widely known, she is often said to be the weakest of the three principals here. Not so. As for Ramon Vinay, Toscanini’s not yet quite fully mature Otello in 1947 (RCA, 3/92), here I still have doubts. AB, who remembers his Otello on stage at around this time, tells me that this Salzburg performance is admirably representative. Vinay also receives the most heartfelt endorsement imaginable from the Cassio here, Anton Dermota. In his memoirs Tausendundein Abend (Vienna: 1978), Dermota describes Vinay’s Otello as a force of nature, theatrically overwhelming. Even so, away from the whole stage experience, it does not stir me as his live ‘unofficial’ 1952 Bayreuth Tristan does. There are too many times when, vocally, he is still scrambling around Otello, like a schoolboy trying to hoist himself over a rather awkward fence. Martinelli (Panizza’s Otello at the Metropolitan in 1938 – Music & Arts, 9/91) or Vickers (for Karajan on EMI) were always in a different league.
The sound on the Furtwangler is tolerable, with far less distortion and far quieter surfaces than you will find on the Panizza set. Voices are caught with a reasonable degree of immediacy, as is the orchestra. The sound is not in any way ‘pleasant’, but it will do. The audience is on the restless side.
In the end, though, the set is only really recommendable to Furtwangler collectors. The Toscanini set, brilliantly conducted, is better sung (Valdengo is superb in the pivotal role of Iago) and better recorded. The Panizza comes in execrable transfers but his conducting is even more thrilling than Toscanini’s and the cast – Martinelli, Tibbett and Rethberg – has never been bettered.'