Customer Reviews

Ettore Bastianini in Recital

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I first heard Bastianini is Serafin's London recording of "La Boheme" with Carlo Bergonzi and Renata Tebaldi. I was impressed then and I still am now.
To possess such evenness in every part of one's range is nothing short of amazing. Bastianini's high notes are as rich as his lows and it is stunning to hear such brassiness in a baritone. A beautiful timbre is matched by peerless vocal skill; he is VERY well trained as a singer. Nothing is out of tune, a beat behind, or cut short for lack of air.
His opera buffo is superb; I wish there was a recording of "The Barber of Seville" with him in the title role. He truly has character when he sings comedic roles and his diction is impeccable; I don't think I've ever heard recitative done that quickly before. He is a little static and distant in "Eri tu" (I like it a little slower), but I think that, had he lived longer, he would have grown more into the role of Renato. Despite this, he is a true Verdi baritone singing with great civility and consistancy. Track 7 from "Don Carlo" shows this perfectly; easily some of the best lyrical phrasing on record.
Every song is done with perfect technique punctuated by great expression. He makes the change from technical singer to interpretive artist with considerable ease, especially in the last tracks which are live recordings of him in concert.
The orchestra and piano accompaniments are just that; accompaniments. And there is little effort made on the part of the conductors to intrude upon his singing. There is depth, but it quietly provides a very easy platform from which to simply listen to his voice and enjoy the sparkling clarity.
The recording quality is excellent mono that sounds like a very distant stereo instead of like someone singing into a box. There is very little static or hiss and the audience is barely audible at all.
Truly, an excellent (and rare) recording of a singer whose voice was a gift from God. It's a rather odd, but very special album that any opera buff should have.

While there have been a few great baritones since Ettore Bastianini's departure from the opera stage, I feel it would be a great loss if we allow his name to be forgotten. In a recent survey by Opera News magazine, Dmitri Hvorostovsky named Bastianini as his inspiration and singing role model, particularly emphasizing a certain "dark force" of his voice. This says a lot coming from today's leading baritone. Indeed, the beauty of the voice and the impeccable technique can be a point of standard for everyone who came after.

Bastianini started out as a bass before developing the powerful upper register to match his rich secure low notes. His baritone is, therefore, the darkest you would ever hear, with a possible exception of Renato Bruson. Yet high tessitura of Verdian arias presented no difficulty for him. On this disk the arias from Un Ballo, Otello, Rigoletto, and Don Carlo are presented in a sequence, all of the highest difficulty and all flawlessly executed. Bastianini must have been perfect on stage as well with sound so immense it overwhelms the recording system several times. His talents also shine in rarely performed arias from operas "Lodoletta", "Il Tabarro", and "L'Amico Fritz". There are four beautiful art songs at the end of the disk. While Bastianini was mostly famous for the sheer beauty of his voice, I found his characterizations to be wonderful as well. Just take Figaro's flamboyant swaggering introduction versus Iago's dark brooding credo. It really sounds like two different people singing. Without ever breaking the line or sacrificing the quality for the dramatic effect, he was able to convey the very nature of the character.

Needless to say, I would like to see more recordings become available of this magnificent baritone. Since he's featured on quite a few Decca releases of complete operas, perhaps the company would treat us with a compilation album? That would be most appreciated by everyone who wants to see the opera legends not perish from audience's memory. In a meanwhile, get this disk that has over 70 minutes of pure joy recorded on a surprisingly good level.

It is no small statement to say here that this CD contains some of the best work by the BEST Baritone of this century. He will be in everybody's book as at least in the top 3 of the century. No one will ever top some of the performances here. His OWN "Largo al factotum", here as perfect if not more so than the studio. His incredible handling of this aria, THIS time stepping into humor, only makes more clear that this aria will never be sung better. The Il Tabarro excerpts here will freeze your blood. They have never been so thrillingly performed, anywhere. His polished, burnished tone, the epitome of bronze and velvet here, gives the role it's only true interpretation. Others have tried, but none will match Bastianini. This CD also comes with SEVEN tracks never issued anywhere else! If you've ever wanted to listen to a great baritone, at his peak, delivering unforgettable gems of magic from his throat, GRAB THIS.

When I listened to Ettore Bastianini for the first time, I got very impressed with the pureness of his sound. His range was incredible and even though he started his career as a bass, his roles as a baritone are superb. His voice of supreme beauty reminds us that baritone's voices don't have to be limited and common. This recording is great. That "Si puo? is powerful. All the arias are performed with passion and beauty. Bastianini is a must to have baritone in all opera collections.

Ettore was the best and the most incredible baritone of all time. This CD contains many of earlier recordings when he switched from bass to baritone. And he sang absolutely wonderful. He'll take you to heaven when you hear pieces from Forza, Ballo and all the rest. He would have been a great Iago. He proved in this CD. He also proved that he was a great comedian in Barbiere and Maschere. What a pleasure and the gift he'd left with us. I can't thank him enough!

It's been a long time since we've heard a baritone with the amplitude, power and beauty that Bastianini possessed. This CD reminds us not only of his vocal qualities but also the breadth of his repertoire, ranging from buffo Rossini and the gloriously vocalised comic stuttering-aria from Mascagni's "Le maschere", to the high, heroic Verdi roles, to the melodrama of verismo, to the subtleties of art songs.

Starting out as a bass, Bastianini retained a resonant low G while developing the ringing A flat we hear in the "Pagliacci" Prologue. The saturnine gleam of his voice is perhaps heard to its best advantage in the extended excerpt until the end of "Il tabarro", in which Bastianini cuts a terrifying figure, his voice managing to snarl with a terrible beauty. He was perhaps the last of a long line of baritones such as Ruffo, Amato and Stracciari et al who had a peculiarly Italianate incisiveness of tone ideally suited to the big, bow-wow, Verdi roles.

The four previously unreleased songs from 1957 appended here suffer from rough sound and a clangourous piano but nonetheless give you a sound idea of how large and vibrant his voice was in a space more confined than an opera house. Sometimes a slightly stolid singer who could rest content to go through the motions when bored by a conductor or a role, Bastianini is here revealed at his most vibrant and impassioned. It is surprising how often one feels one might be listening to a bass of the vocal timbre of, say, Ghiaurov until he unleashes that thrilling top and reveals his true baritone tessitura.

Obviously the tracks in the best sound by far are those from RAI broadcasts from the early 60's; the only really noticeable omission here is his di Luna but that is available in many different, complete, live recordings such as that of the celebrated Karajan performance at Salzburg and the Serafin studio version. In my experience of post WWII baritones, only Robert Merrill had the same vocal stamina and richness of tone but Bastianini is a more exciting and temperamental artist than he. My personal favourite here in addition to the "Il tabarro" excerpt is Bastianini's vibrant portrayal of Gérard in the aria from "Andrea Chénier", similar to his performance in the marvellous, tub-thumping studio recording of that same opera with Stelal and Corelli - but whichever aria I am currently listening to, I find myself thinking that is my favourite.

Bastianini's status as a vocal legend was inevitably enhanced by his cruelly premature death from throat cancer. Anyone wishing to hear what many consider to be the single most striking baritone of the 50's and 60's need only track down this CD to hear the vindication of his high reputation.

Ettore Bastianini is so awesome! The man could really sing, and I mean, really sing! His voice is so dark, so sexy, aristocratic, it sounds like bronze. He really was a vocal phenomenon. I was always interested in him; the rave reviews on amazon convinced me to purchase this CD, and I'm glad I did. His voice was gorgeous.

Bastianini was a wonderful singer, and his beautiful bass-baritone voice suits most of these roles well. I have not heard this particular disc but I have heard the singer in all these roles (on record). He was a wonderful voice, easily several times better than any baritone today. But he was not the "greatest baritone of the century" or even close to it. Since MacNeil's retirement, we have been oddly bereft of great baritone voices. In that context, listening to Bastianini must seem a revelation. But if one listens to singers before 1926, you will see that there is a another layer of singing we have lost, not voice, but artistry. Gobbi, Merrill and sometimes, MacNeil were our throwbacks but for the most part, baritonal artistry was gone forever after 1925. And as everyone knows, the "greatest baritone of the century" was Ruffo!