Customer Reviews

Falstaff: Salzburg Experience 1935-1937

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This recording is different from most of Toscanini's complete operas in that it was taken from an actual LIVE PERFORMANCE in an opera house, and not a "concert" performance at NBC. The differences are enormous. To begin with, Toscanini himself conducts more sinuously, more loosely than he did in 1952; like that later performance, the orchestra dances and sings, but here it is also whimsical, making rhetorical comments on the comedy as it progresses. For another thing, the singers are more involved, actually quite funny in their characterizations. In the later NBC performance, Herva Nelli, Teresa Stich-Randall and Giuseppe Valdengo all sing quite beautifully, but only contralto Cloe Elmo (Dame Quickly) really sounds funny and involved. Especially revealing, to me, was Mariano Stabile as Falstaff. I had heard his commercial recordings and was not impressed, but on this performance he is an eminently satisfying singer. A real surprise was Angelica Cravencko as Quickly: a real Slavic contralto, with the fabulous baritone-like low range that only such singers possess. Dino Borgioli, after a slow start, warms up to reveal himself as the finest Fenton on records. His aria in the last act is a revelation, elegant and sung in a true bel canto style that Toscanini supposedly hated. The only principal singer who is just "OK" and not fabulous is Augusta Oltrabella as Nanetta: the voice is just a tad wiry and overbright, but she is on pitch and sings with marvelous phrasing. And the Vienna Philharmonic plays its HEART out in this performance!! Reportedly, when this production was first done in Salzburg in 1935, Felix Weingartner, the Philharmonic's principal conductor, jumped into the orchestra pit and exclaimed, "Children, such perfection I never thought I would hear in my lifetime." And perfect it is.

Toscanini's 1937 Salzburg operas (the other two were "The Magic Flute" and "Die Meistersinger") were recorded on a weird process called Selenophone. Sound was etched, in hill-and-dale fashion, into 8MM film. The result was a sound quality that was shrill and dry, with pitch fluctuations, distortion and plenty of surface noise. Grammofono 2000 has performed miracles in reconstructing the sound from such a terrible source: the pitch problems and distortion are gone, at its worst the sound is now full and listenable, at its best it rivals a good broadcast transcript. But, of course, it is not really perfect. So...for those who can accept sound that is still rather less than perfect, I say, buy it now. If you are very picky on sonics, opt for the RCA recording. The only other "Falstaff" that was in this class was the 1980 Karajan performance with Giuseppe Taddei, once available on Philips CDs (and on video), now sadly out of the catalogue.

Utterly phenomenal; astounding from start to finish.