Verdi: Rigoletto

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Cat No: 8111242-43

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Release Date: 01 January 2007

Label: Naxos - Historical / Naxos Historical

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 2

Barcode: 747313324224

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: VERDI

Description
Great Opera Recordings Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) Rigoletto Opera in Three Acts Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave after Victor Hugo's Le Roi s'amuseRigoletto - Tito Gobbi (baritone) Gilda - Maria Callas (soprano) Duke of Mantua - Giuseppe Di Stefano (tenor) Maddalena - Adriana Lazzarini (contralto) Sparafucile - Nicola Zaccaria (bass) Count Monterone - Plinio Clabassi (bass) Cavaliere Marullo - William Dickie (baritone) Matteo Borsa - Renato Ercolani (tenor) Count Ceprano - Carlo Forti (bass) Countess Ceprano - Elvira Galassi (mezzo-soprano) Giovanna - Giuse Gerbino (mezzo-soprano) Page of the Duchess - Luisa Mandelli (mezzo-soprano) Court Usher - Vittorio Tatozzi (tenor)Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala, Milan (Norberto Mola, chorus master) Tullio Serafin In the summer of 1955 the last opera recording for Angel/Columbia [EMI] Callas would take part in was Rigoletto; it was first published in February 1956. Gilda is a typical soprano leggero rôle and has been a favourite of many, among them Anna Netrebko (born 1971), Joan Sutherland (born 1926), Lily Pons (1898-1976), Amelita Galli-Curci (1882-1963), Luisa Tetrazzini (1871-1940), Nellie Melba (1861-1931) back to Adelina Patti (1843-1919), all of whom undertook it many times and at different theatres. Callas, however, undertook Gilda only twice in the opera house at the Bellas Artes, Mexico City in 1952.As this recording testifies, and despite the wide tessitura, it presents Callas with no technical problems, and she is able to accomplish the music easily and effortlessly. She is content to use the middle register and does not, as she does in Suicidio in Ponchielli's Gioconda, carry the chest register up ostentatiously to G, even A flat; singing so intensely at the extremes of her range in fitting verismo style make it impossible for her to reconcile the different registers. In her singing of Gilda there are many details to admire. In Act I the rhythmic accuracy of her attack in the Allegro vivace passage, as the tempo speeds up when the Duke enters and Gilda calls for her maid, Giovanna, immediately before the Act I duet E il sol dell'anima. Caro nome she sings at what is for her a typical tempo, though most Gildas, if they took it as slowly, would run out of breath long before they reached the end of phrases. How effectively she shows the difference between Caronome, as the portamento marking indicates, and Caro nome, as it too often becomes without a proper conception of legato. Particularly affecting is her beautifully phrased, impeccable rendering of groups of falling sixths, rising from G and A flat to B flat.She takes a similarly expansive tempo in Act II in Tutte le feste. Especially eloquent is her realisation of the characterful significance of the passage of triplets directly before the scene sweeps on to a fortissimo climax at Rigoletto's entrance; she contrives a lachrymose effect taking these in one breath, articulat
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