5196105782

CLASSICAL Record Reviews

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••i

(Continued from page 89) ume rise, that Horne rnaintains a high leve! of mechanical efficiency behind her vocal and emotional battle armor, and

thai Pavarotti sweats bullets for everv

*

phrase he $queezes out.

Taken together. however. and en-shrouded in all the fan adulation and media hype, the performances depress me a lot. There’s a good deal of wonder-ful musie in this program (even though much of it is rudely ripped out of con-text). and some other musie—such as the Masnadieri and Donna de! lago arias-that can make honest human contact un-der certain conditions of virtuosity and concentration. And yet. for all the talent on hand here, the performances are al-most willfully empty.

The Ernani and Gioconda “trios^ł* are such incomplete excerpts that they probably can’t be performed coherently. For that matter. even the twenty-two-minutę .Wonna sequence begins and ends in the middle of nowhere.

But what aboul the Trovarore finał scene? It’s a self-contained unit (if you discount the three and a half acts that precede it. but what the heck?), and my impression is that ifs better sung than the version in our stars' unfortunate recording of the complete opera—I don’t propose to undertake detailed compari-sons. The point is. the notes are all morę or less in place, and it’s not painful to listen to, but the musie doesn*t appear to be about anything, hardly even seems to exist.

Superstardom-i.e.. the kind of ee-lebrity worship on display in this pack-age—is undoubtedly an enormousiy se-ductive temptation, and those of us who have never faced the temptation can’t say how we would respond. Can we agree. though. that the temptation should be resisted?

For the benefit of “young vocal as-pirants," Blanche Marchesi deyoted a chapter in her autobiography to Adelina Patti. “partly to show the reward of talent and work, and partly to wam them never to let the character be spoiled by success. Such is human weakness and vanitv that if one does not cultivate the

i

best human qualities one soon becomes not only the idol of the public but the idol of oneself. This ends in becoming one’s own caricature. and is a sad ex-arnple of the evil effects success can have on a human soul ^M

Of course Marchesi never faced the temptation of that kind of success either.

The close-in recorded sound is de-tailed and not very alluring. The orchestra is recessively balanced. but we don’t seem to be missing much. given Bon-ynge’s unresponsive conducting. There are complete printed texts along with ex-tensive and often embarrassing notes.

K.F.

92

HIGH FIDELITY