I swear, Caballé and Domingo were electrifying that night, but I will still need to scrounge to give you an idea of what I remember

AMELIA: Grant me, o Lord,
strength to cleanse my heart
and allay the inflamed
throbbing in my breast.

by Ken

No, there's nothing wrong with your computer, or your ears -- there's no singing in this audio clip. What it is -- in what I think is a pretty special performance (we'll talk more about this later) -- is a chunk of the orchestral introduction to Act II of Verdi's A Masked Ball (Un Ballo in maschera), which so powerfully recalls this crucial moment from Act I, Scene 2, when Amelia visits the fortune-teller Ulrica seeking help with a desperate problem: that she's hopelessly in love with her husband's best friend, an unfortunate complication being that the proceedings happen to be overhead by that self-same best friend, who happens to share that very passion, and who, although he too knows that he mustn't act on it, regrettably doesn't necessarily not do things he knows he mustn't, self-denial not being his strong suit.


LET'S HEAR THIS IMPASSIONED MOMENT FOR REAL

VERDI: Un Ballo in maschera: Act I, Scene 2, Amelia, "Consentimi, o Signore, virtù"

AMELIA: Grant me, o Lord,
strength to cleanse my heart
and allay the inflamed
throbbing in my breast.
ULRICA [overlapping]: Go, do not tremble; the charm
will dry your tears.
Be bold, and in the drink you will drink
oblivion of your anguish.
RICCARDO [overlapping]: (Ah! I am on fire and am determined
to follow her, even were it into the abyss.
if only I may breathe
the air of your sighs, Amelia.)

-- English translation by Lionel Salter

Maria Callas (s), Amelia; Fedora Barbieri (ms), Ulrica; Giuseppe di Stefano (t), Riccardo; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Antonino Votto, cond. EMI, recorded Sept. 4-9, 1956

Leontyne Price (s), Amelia; Mignon Dunn (ms), Ulrica; Carlo Bergonzi (t), Riccardo; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, cond. Live performance, Feb. 26, 1966

Margaret Price (s), Amelia; Christa Ludwig (ms), Ulrica; Luciano Pavarotti (t), Riccardo; National Philharmonic Orchestrta, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded May-June 1982 and May 1983

Birgit Nilsson (s), Amelia; Giulietta Simionato (ms), Ulrica; Carlo Bergonzi (t), Riccardo; Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia (Rome), Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded 1960-61


SO, WTF DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH CABALLÉ?

Oh, Caballé, right. As you may have gathered from today's post title, this is about a Met performance of Ballo I attended in October 1970, specifically Tuesday the 13th.

It didn't require supersleuthery to track down "my" performance ine Met Annals.

(1) Caballé, it turned out, is listed as having sung a grand total of five performances of Verdi's Ballo in maschera with the company, and they were easy enought to track down -- all took place in October and November of 1970..The remaining five fall Ballo Amelias were sung by Martina Arroyo (3), Gabriella Tucci (1), and Elinor Ross (1); of course, one or more of these may have been substitutions.

(2) Only the first three of those performances were with Domingo, and two of those were on Saturday nights. I can't imagine how I would have come by a ticket for a Saturday-night performance, so by process of elimination, voilà!, "my" performance was Tuesday, October 13. Which means the Renato was Robert Merrill (which would have made me happy; I liked Merrill), and the Ulrica, Irene Dalis (of whom I became a big fan). The conductor for all 10 fall Ballo performances was Francesco Molinari-Pradelli; when the opera returned in January for two more performances, including a broadcast, with Arroyo and Domingo, Fausto Cleva was in the pit.

It says something about my expectations of the time that I didn't regard a Ballo with Caballé and Domingo. I was already a Domingo fan, I guess from his City Opera roots, but one thing I didn't have much expectation of was excitement, and Riccardo is a role that kind of demands some kind of personal energy. And because Caballé had made her big splash in bel canto repertory, and her Met debut as Marguerite in Faust, I just didn't think of her as a "Verdi soprano." Violetta (the role of her first complete-opera recording for RCA), okay, and maybe a couple of the others.

As it happens, I was wrong, mostly. Not only did Caballé wind up doing a whole lot of singing in the neavyweight Verdi repertory, I came to understand that the voice had all the fixin's for it -- add to the vocal dexterity she'd displayed in her bel canto roles the considerable heft the voice possessed, not to mention the command of a wide range of dynamics and vocal colors and textures, and she had about as many qualifications for this repertory as I could ask for.

Last week Queen Elisabeth stands up to King Philip, Caballé-style, having so happily reencountered her 1972 Met Don Carlos broadcast, I hoped for a "hit" when I thought of leading off the post with her voicing of Queen Elisabeth's reply to King Philip's presumed-guilty revelation of the portrait of Carlos in her jewel casket, and sure enough, it's altogether wonderful. Going back as well to her 1971 EMI recording of the role with Carlo Maria Giulini, I had to acknowledge that it's better than I remembered, and yet it did have some of the sluggishness and vocal gear-shifting that lurked in my memory, and that characterized at least my memory of a lot of her singing of Verdi roles, which seem to me to demand a base of strong legato singing -- from which all of the variations Caballé could play blessedly.

In fact, although that night in October 1970 I hadn't heard any of the performances of Amelia's "Consentimi, o Signore" we heard earlier today (only one of them had taken place, of course), they do in some ways represent some kinds of singing I was prepared for. Let's listen again:

VERDI: Un Ballo in maschera: Act I, Scene 2, Amelia, "Consentimi, o Signore, virtù"

AMELIA: Grant me, o Lord,
strength to cleanse my heart
and allay the inflamed
throbbing in my breast.
ULRICA [overlapping]: Go, do not tremble; the charm
will dry your tears.
Be bold, and in the drink you will drink
oblivion of your anguish.
RICCARDO [overlapping]: (Ah! I am on fire and am determined
to follow her, even were it into the abyss.
if only I may breathe
the air of your sighs, Amelia.)

-- English translation by Lionel Salter

Montserrat Caballé (s), Amelia; Erzsébet Komlóssy (c), Ulrica; Flaviano Labò (t), Riccardo; RAI Symphony Orchestra, Rome, Bruno Bartoletti, cond. Broadcast performance, Oct. 14, 1969

Montserrat Caballé (s), Amelia; Lili Chookasian (c), Ulrica; Plácido Domingo (t), Riccardo; Orchestra of the Gran Teatro del Liceo (Barcelona), Giuseppe Patanè, cond. Live performance, 1972

Montserrat Caballé (s), Amelia; Ruza Baldani (ms), Ulrica; José Carreras (t), Riccardo; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, cond. Live performance, Feb. 13, 1975

Montserrat Caballé (s), Amelia; Patricia Payne (c), Ulrica; José Carreras (t), Riccardo; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded1978

Huh??? These are, you know, all over the place.

Now, I certainly don't mean to suggest that a singer should sing a passage the same way every time. But none of these seems to me really a "way." It's more like a collections of strategies and effects. None of these renderings is awful; each has its moments, even moments when it seems as if maybe this time she's on to, well, something. But really, none of them seems to me to make an actual musicodramatic statement of this important moment. Just compare any of the non-Caballé versions we heard earlier in this post -- even Birgit Nilsson's, coming from a voice clearly not by nature set up for Verdi singing, and yet here making a real statement with this glorious moment. (In fact, I had planned to use, not this excerpt from her 1960-61 commercial recording, but a somewhat later and more successful Met broadcast, but my computer disk drive refused to recognize the disk. It plays fine on other equipment, but what could I do? Fortunately, I think the commercial recording demonstrates the point quite nicely.)


BUT ON THAT NIGHT, I'M HERE TO TELL YOU,
BOTH CABALLÉ AND DOMINGO WERE ON FIRE!

I still have to sift through my Caballé Ballo holdings to see whether I can find anything that suggests what I remember from that night. And I suppose my Domingo Ballo holdings as well. I really don't recall that any of his complete recordings, or the recordings of the Act II duet with Leontyne Price and Katia Ricciarelli, are "it."

And then again, we're talking about memory here. Maybe I'm just wrong about what I heard. Maybe I was in an exceptionally, er, receptive mood that night? Who knows? Let me do some bare-knuckles listening and see if I turn up anything.


FOR NOW, THOUGH, SHOULDN'T WE HEAR THE FULL
VERSIONS OF THE ULRICA-AMELIA-RICCARDO SCENE?

First, the Caballé versions, still in chronological order.

VERDI: Un Ballo in maschera: Act I, Scene 2, Ulrica-Amellia-Riccardo scene

ULRICA: What agitates you so?
AMELIA: A secret, bitter woe aroused by love.
ULRICA:
RICCARDO [concealed]: (What do I hear?)
ULRICA : And you are seeking?
AMELIA: Peace . . . to tear from my heart the one
who so rules my fate and my longing,
and whom heaven has set as arbiter of us all.
RICCARDO: (What do I hear? My love!)
ULRICA: There is a way to forget. I know
secret distillations of a magic herb
that restores the hear . . . But those who need it
must pick it with their own hands
at dead of night.
It is a dreaded place.
AMELIA: Where is it?
ULRICA: Do you dare?
AMELIA [resolutely]: Yes, no matter where.
ULRICA: Then listen:
In the western part of the city,
there where in the gloom
the pale moon shines down
on the field of execution . . .
Its stems are rooted
in those stones of infamy
where guilt is atoned for
with the final breath!
AMELIA: O God! What a place!
ULRICA: You are already
aghast and trembling?
RICCARDO: (Poor heart!)
ULRICA: Are you deterred?
AMELIA: My blood runs cold.
ULRICA: Yet you dare?
AMELIA: If this is what I must do,
even I will find the strength.
ULRICA: Tonight?
AMELIA: Yes.
RICCARDO: (Not alone,
for I must follow you.)
RICCARDO:
AMELIA: Grant me, o Lord,
strength to cleanse my heart
and allay the inflamed
throbbing in my breast.
ULRICA [overlapping]: Go, do not tremble; the charm
will dry your tears.
Be bold, and in the drink you will drink
oblivion of your anguish.
RICCARDO [overlapping]: (Ah! I am on fire and am determined
to follow her, even were it into the abyss.
if only I may breathe
the air of your sighs, Amelia.)
VOICES [from the background]: Daughter of Hades, open your cloister;
[pushing at the door] witout more delay, show yourself
ULRICA [to AMELIA]: Quickly, begone . . . Farewell.
RICCARDO: (Not alone, for I must follow you.)
[AMELIA flees by the secret door.]

-- English translation (mostly) by Lionel Salter

Erzsébet Komlóssy (c), Ulrica; Montserrat Caballé (s), Amelia; Flaviano Labò (t), Riccardo; RAI Symphony Orchestra, Rome, Bruno Bartoletti, cond. Broadcast performance, Oct. 14, 1969

Lili Chookasian (c), Ulrica; Montserrat Caballé (s), Amelia; Plácido Domingo (t), Riccardo; Orchestra of the Gran Teatro del Liceo (Barcelona), Giuseppe Patanè, cond. Live performance, 1972

Ruza Baldani (ms), Ulrica; Montserrat Caballé (s), Amelia; José Carreras (t), Riccardo; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, cond. Live performance, Feb. 13, 1975

Patricia Payne (c), Ulrica; Montserrat Caballé (s), Amelia; José Carreras (t), Riccardo; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded 1978

Now the non-Caballé versions:


Fedora Barbieri (ms), Ulrica; Maria Callas (s), Amelia; Giuseppe di Stefano (t), Riccardo; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Antonino Votto, cond. EMI, recorded Sept. 4-9, 1956

Mignon Dunn (ms), Ulrica; Leontyne Price (s), Amelia; Carlo Bergonzi (t), Riccardo; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, cond. Live performance, Feb. 26, 1966

Christa Ludwig (ms), Ulrica; Margaret Price (s), Amelia; Luciano Pavarotti (t), Riccardo; National Philharmonic Orchestrta, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded May-June 1982 and May 1983

Giulietta Simionato (ms), Ulrica; Birgit Nilsson (s), Amelia; Carlo Bergonzi (t), Riccardo; Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia (Rome), Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded 1960-61

Some quick performance notes on the non-Caballé versions:

• I've always loved the Callas-et-al. Ballo. Sometimes I worry that I over-appreciate my first recordings of operas, but in cases like this I worry that I sometimes under-appreciate. This recording seems to me to have just about everything going for it: what may be Callas's most completely successful commercial recording of a role, in which she's surrounded by colleagues genuinely worthy of her, really doing it (my way of distinguishing this from the to-me-disappointing Tosca, which seems to me to have most of the life and most of its talented performers' individuality drilled out of them in the recording process). This may be Giuseppe di Stefano's happiest recording as well; the abundant charm that pours out of his singing is much to the point for Riccardo, and so is the smuggish self-satisfaction along with the already-wearing vocal glitches. I think Tito Gobbi is also represented extremely well here; while it's certainly possible to imagine a more refulgent Renato, within his familiar vocal limitations Gobbi offers a really smart performance. I have no complaints about Fedora Barbieri's Ulrica -- which reminds me that we really need to look at the rest of her scene, one that I adore. Finally, Antonino Votto runs this extraordinary show -- for me, this is the first opera in which Verdi made no missteps, having just the right music for everything the libretto calls for -- about as well as I could hope.

• I though the Ballo Amelia brought forth some of the most beautiful singing I ever heard from Leontyne Price, and sampling the 1966 Met broadcast -- under, once again, the deceptively deeply wise guidance of Molinari-Pradelli -- enables us to sidestep the problematic RCA recording she made about the same time.

• Isn't it interesting to hear the two Solti recordings, made more than 20 years apart? Maybe not, but in their very different ways, Margaret Price and (as previously noted) Birgit Nilsson are distinctive Amelias, surrounded by able partners. (oOkay, I'm not so fond of Christa Ludwig's Ulrica, but we're going to deal with Ulrica separately, aren't we?)


FINALLY, I SAID WE'D TALK MORE ABOUT THE BALLO
ACT II PRELUDE, AND THE BIT WE'VE ALREADY HEARD

That little prelude is, as you can see from the timings of the clips below, not much more than two minutes. But as so often happened, Gianandrea Gavazzeni had more than most conductors to tell us about it. Even in the '60s and '70s, the dawning and formative years of my operatic passions, when I could be -- as I've been noting these last couple of weeks -- so uncharitably unappreciative of the talents of solid Italian maestri like Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, I came to appreciate that Gavazzeni was something else again.

Oh sure, Gavazzeni had the expected native understanding of the inner workings of Italian operatic repertory, but he also had an inquiring mind that didn't often settle for obvious musical "line readings." And tiny as this little orchestral introduction is, he found even more expressive content than most conductors do. Here is his recording of the whole thing:

VERDI: Un Ballo in maschera: Act II Prelude


[our excerpt begins at 0:35] Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, cond. DG, recorded 1960

For comparison, here are a couple of more "normal" performances -- both very good ones, which get Act II going, but maybe don't prepare us for the powerful dramatic things to come as, well, dramatically as Gavazzeni's does.


[our excerpt begins at 0:34] Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded Jan.-Feb. 1989

[our excerpt begins at 0:34] Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Antonino Votto, cond. EMI, recorded Sept. 4-9, 1956

THE CABALLÉ REMEMBRANCE SERIES SO FAR

Montserrat Caballé (1933-2018) (11/14/2018)
Yes, we have more Caballé, but mostly as a spur to reflecting on my (and others' too?) relationship to music (and other arts too?) (10/21/2018)
More Caballé: as Lauretta, Luisa, Violetta, Lucia, and Elisabeth (10/28/2018)
Queen Elisabeth stands up to King Philip, Caballé-style (11/4/2018)
In a nutshell: It's tough to conjure up Caballé in the most electric performance I heard her give (11/11/2018 [1])
I swear, Caballé and Domingo were electrifying that night, but I will still need to scrounge to give you an idea of what I remember (11/11/2018 [2])

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