After a long, long gap – and no doubt in readiness for the Verdi centenary next year – Philips has revived its Verdi opera series. I wish I could be more enthusiastic about the results. This piece, a re-working for Paris of I Lombardi and Verdi’s first essay in the French style, notable particularly in the more airy textures and lighter writing for the voices (curiously down a semitone in most cases so that high notes can be interpolated in cadenzas!), has had a mixed reception from writers on Verdi. In his epic study of the operas (Cassell: 1973-81), Julian Budden breaks a lance for the work and castigates his predecessors for underrating it, but I am not sure, on this evidence, that their verdict is not the right one.
The new libretto is, if that were possible, even more absurd and dense than the one of Lombardi (described to me by one noted Verdian as ‘Theatre of the Absurd’). As with the earlier score, the music moves rather in fits and starts, seldom gaining the dramatic momentum of Verdi’s truly inspired pieces. Moments of illumination, mostly in the music for soprano heroine and tenor hero, are both deeply felt and beautifully wrought, but the other characters are made of cardboard and often given feeble music. The Act 3 ballet, something obligatory at the Paris Opera in the 1840s, is paltry.
My impressions of the work might have been more favourable had the performance been more convincing. It seems strange to cast a Russian soprano and two Italians in the main roles of an opera that cries out for French style and enunciation. As it is, without the benefit of a libretto, I could catch scarcely a word that Merscheriakova sings, so while appreciating her often sensuous and lovely voice, I found her interpretation of Helene uninteresting. She is at her best in her Act 2 aria and in the following duet with her beloved Gaston, sung with a great deal of sensitivity on both sides, as are their contributions to the Act 4 trio, ‘Dieu nous separe, Helene’. He has a better shot at the language, but his style remains Italianate and his pitch isn’t always secure. As the villainous Roger (Pagano in the original), Scandiuzzi is lugubrious, his once firm and compelling bass now rough and uneven. The Francophone baritone Philippe Rouillon makes his mark as the hapless Count. Daniel Borowski, in the minor but important role of the papal Legate, sings coarsely.
Fabio Luisi keeps his disparate forces in reasonable control, and is blessed with a fine orchestra and chorus, the latter showing up the soloists in their excellent delivery of French, especially in the Act 4 ‘Coro della Processione’, subtly altered from Lombardi to accommodate more sophisticated forces in Paris. Indeed the grand ensembles are perhaps the most enjoyable
parts of the whole venture: here Verdi shows signs of great things to come. Few other sections take wing as they might have done in more sympathetic hands. The recording too often distances the singers. For all my reservations, it’s good to have the piece on CD and in the original rather than in the poor Italian translation.'