This is a historic recording with a difference. It offers generous excerpts from a live recording made in Cape Town in l960, when for the first time in South Africa an Italian opera was performed complete by a multi-racial cast. Most of these singers were amateurs, with little or no formal vocal training, and despite the lively conducting of Joseph Manca, the mastermind behind the Eoan Group, it would be foolish to expect international standards. Ensembles and choruses are often ragged, and the closeness of the balance on voices lets one register even the slightest discrepancy.
Yet the performance has a thrust and energy which reflects an occasion which plainly moved the audience in the City Hall as much as the cast. Its success rests to a great degree on the qualities of the three principals, all of them intelligent singers, not always polished, who use their fresh, clear voices with admirable technique. The tenor who sings the role of the Duke, Joseph Gabriels, went on to study in Milan and make a successful career in Europe, notably in Germany. His tenor has an attractively Italianate quality, and the tricks he adopts in his readings of the big moments show how well he had registered the example of leading Italian tenors on record.
‘La donna e mobile’ brings something of an exception, when unlike the rest of the performance it is slow and heavy, and inspires no applause at the end – unthinkable when otherwise solos are received vociferously. I suspect it was taken from a rehearsal rather than the actual performance. The contrast with the quartet, immediately following, is marked, but there the balances are odd, with Gilda and Rigoletto much more distant than the Duke and Maddalena (the excellent mezzo, Sophie Andrews).
As Gilda, Ruth Goodwin uses her light, flexible soprano most stylishly, with coloratura presenting no problems for her. If intonation is suspect on the occasional exposed note, it reflects the fact that with little vibrato this is a voice which demands pinpoint precision, and almost always gets it.
The Rigoletto of Lionel Fourie is comparably secure: a firm, cleanly focused baritone, finely controlled. He may not be ideally characterful but delivers the big solos with fine attack and plenty of feeling. The three Gilda-Rigoletto duets are among the highlights of the whole performance, notably ‘Ah! veglia, o donna’ in Act 1 and ‘Piangi, fanciulla’ in Act 2, with fine shading of legato from Fourie, even though in Act 3 the voice begins to grow tired.
The others provide good support, though none can quite match those principals. The sound is limited, with the voices for the most part cleanly focused with forward balance, so that words are exceptionally clear. An unusual and fascinating insight into music-making in South Africa during the Apartheid years.'