Elizabeth Futral does her best at singing while she histrionicizes Nedda's recitative and Balatella. The chunk of recitative below, the first of three, occupies the first 57 seconds of the clip.
(1) "Qual fiamma avea nel guardo!"
How his eyes did blaze! I turned mine
away for fear he should read
my secret thought!
Oh, if he should catch me,
brutal as he is! But enough,
these are frightening nightmares and silly fancies!
Claudia Muzio (s). Edison, recorded Jan. 21, 1921
Gabriella Tucci (s), Nedda; Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, cond. Decca, recorded 1958
"Nedda is at best an unthinking creature who allows her basic desires to get the better of her."
-- from the London Records booklet for the 1967 Decca Pagliacci
by Ken
Now it could be that our commentator means that in describing Nedda as "at best an unthinking creature" he has in mind a comparison with her husband, Canio, the master of their little troupe of itinerant players (or pagliacci), who is well known as a student of the dialogues of Plato. Or it could be that he has simply embraced the popular view of the function of art as a medium for making people even stupider.
We've been working our way through the opening scenes of I Pagliacci, starting several weeks ago ("On our way to focusing on Nedda's scenes with the two baritones of Leoncavallo's Pagliacci") with some attention to the statement of the "author" in the Prologue and to Canio himself and then venturing into the monologue Nedda sings when the rest of the troupe goes off with a band of villagers to enjoy a drink or two, leaving her alone -- except, importantly, the hunchback clown Tonio, who's now off grooming the little donkey. Then in Friday night's preview ("'He said, she said' in the opening scenes of I Pagliacci") we began taking a closer look at Nedda's monologue, starting with the chunk of recitative we heard again above.
If it's fully imagined and experienced, it already tells us an awful lot about the character, I think: about the closed-in, fearful way Nedda lives; about her husband's brutality (whose exact form we're left to imagine for ourselves, though there seems to me no doubt that she fears the worst); about the dangerous secret she's keeping; and then about her way of dealing with all the above.
THIS SETS THE STAGE FOR --
