Customer Reviews

Puccini: La fanciulla del West

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wow!! I have never heard a more potent and heartfelt Fanciulla than this one. Frazzoni is an undiscovered gem. Her heart informs every word she sings and she has an incredible voice. Her piano tones are georgeous. Generic vocal terms and cliches will not fit Frazzoni for she is an exception to the rule, for example, there is no limit to how high she will take her "chest voice". Every single tone is wide open, but she never lost her voice even to this day. Her voice is supported very firmly on the breath. I will not speak of Corelli or Gobbi much as they are fabulous as usual. Votto has a powerful impact with orchestra; the sonorities are vivid and the heaviness of the score is amply displayed.

Back to my darling Frazzoni--she is not a Minnie you weep for like Tebaldi, nor one you admire like Steber. She is a Minnie you leave saying "You go Girl!!!"

Please buy it!!!

This performance of Puccini's "La Fannicula del West" came to me as a complete surprise. I originally bought the set for Franco Corelli, who, for me, is THE tenor of the middle-of-the-twentieth century period. His performance here does not in any way dispell that opinion. He's in outstanding youthful form, powerful, yet sensitive, and his golden tone pour out like lava. Tito Gobbi is a vivid Jack Rance, and his singing is full of wonderful inflections. But the REAL surprise here is the Minnie of Gigliola Frazzoni, a shamefully neglected soprano who sang at La Scala during the days when Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi reigned in Europe. As great as both Callas and Tebaldi certainly were, Frazzoni in this performance would give either one of them a run for their money. She displays a massive dramatic soprano, with wonderfully rich chest tones, and she gives this difficult role everything she's got, which is considerable. I am in 100% agreement with the previous reviewer about this performance. Moreover, the sound, while not perfect, is nevertheless remarkably good for the period and the circumstances. I actually find this performance as good, if not better than the legendary London recording (in studio stereo) starring Del Monaco and Tebaldi. If you're a Corelli fan, this record is a must; if you love Puccini, and want to hear his most passionate score, you must own this recording.

SOURCE:
Live performance from Teatro alla Scala, Milano, April 4, 1956.

SOUND:
The sound on this set is fairly typical of live recordings of slightly questionable provenance of Italian operas in the 1950s. Listen to any one of several Callas performances of the same vintage and you will hear something similar. It sounds, in short, like something heard on an AM radio in a 1956 Chevy--not actually awful but hardly the thing to delight an audiophile. Anyone who purchases this recording should do it for the fine performance, not the sound reproduction.

CAST:
THE TOWNSFOLK: Minnie, the girl of the golden west, and proprietor of the Polka Saloon - Gigliola Frazzoni (soprano); Jack Rance, the sheriff who loves Minnie - Tito Gobbi (baritone); Ashby, the Wells Fargo agent - Ugo Novelli (bass); Nick, the waiter at the Polka Saloon - Franco Ricciardi (tenor); Wowkle, Minnie's maid - Unidentified (mezzo-soprano); Billy Jackrabbit, Wowkle's husband - Unidentified (bass).
THE MINER FORTY-NINERS: Bello - Pierluigi Latinuzzi (baritone); Happy - Carlo Forti (baritone); Harry - Gino Del Signore (tenor); Joe - Angelo Mercuriali (tenor); Larkens - Unidentified (bass); Sid - Michele Cazzato (baritone); Sonora - Enzo Sordello (baritone); Trin - Athos Cesarini (tenor).
THE BANDITS: Dick Johnson AKA Ramerrez, a badman who just might be reformable and who also loves Minnie - Franco Corelli (tenor); José Castro, one of the Ramerrez Gang - Vittorio Tatozzi (bass).
THE OTHERS: Jake Wallace, an itinerant singer - Nicola Zaccaria (baritone); a Pony Express rider - Unidentified (tenor)

CONDUCTOR:
Antonino Votto with the Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro alla Scala, Milano.

DOCUMENTATION:
This set comes with even less than the usual Od'O bargain package: No libretto. Short summary of the plot. Track list that fails to identify singers or to provide timings.


COMMENTARY:
After the successes of "La boheme," "Tosca" and "Madama Butterfly," Giacomo Puccini went looking for a new story and, since the Twentieth Century was now firmly established, something of a new style. He found both in New York at the David Belasco Theater.

David Belasco (1853-1931) was a giant of the American theater, an author-producer-stage director who was associated with about four hundred plays during his career, many of them--perhaps most of them written by himself. He was famous for the realism of his elaborate stage productions. Puccini had already mined Belasco's works for "Madama Butterfly." Now he would snaffle up another of Belasco's Broadway hits: "The Girl of the Golden West."

David Belasco had been born in San Francisco, a city which had drawn his father to it during the goldrush of 1849. The travails and tribulations of the old "forty-niners" were clearly part of the playwright's family heritage. He tossed memories and myths into a theatrical stewpot and out of it came Minnie, proprietor of the Polka Saloon in some ranshackle, temporary boomtown (not unlike the actual little village of Volcano, which for a short time had a larger population than San Francisco, itself) near the diggings and placer sites on the American River. To populate the saloon, he added a platoon of footloose, lonely and homesick miners, all under the thumb of a tough gambler/sheriff. For dramatic conflict he added a western badman--who was not necessarily irredeemable. And he made them all love Minnie. And, what the heck, for seasoning and local color, Belasco tossed in a Wells Fargo agent and a Pony Express Rider, being utterly indifferent to the facts that the Pony Express came along eleven years after that particular goldrush and that the Wells Fargo stage operations appeared six years later still.

"La fanciulla de west" premiered in December 1910 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. It was given a production appropriate for the most popular living opera composer. David Belasco designed the production (with full-sized trees and real horses) and served as stage director. Arturo Toscanini conducted. Enrico Caruso was the badman, Dick Johnson--complete with furry chaps, twin six-guns and ten-(or maybe twenty-)gallon hat. Pasquale Amato was the sheriff, Jack Rance and then-famous dramatic soprano Emmy Destinn was Minnie.

The show was a success--sort of, just as the opera has continued to be a success--sort of. "La fanciulla" has contributed a warhorse piece or two to the concert repertory. It is--or used to be when people could still sing it--revived with some regularity. Knowledgeable opera fans regularly praise it, often more generously than they do "La boheme" or "Tosca," but so far as I can tell, the opera isn't loved, certainly not loved in the way that the ticket-buying public loves "Boheme" or "Tosca" or "Butterfly" or even "Turandot."

Among the musical changes in style that Puccini brought to "La fanciulla" was an emphasis on the chorus of miners. They collectively become a character in the drama as prominent as Johnson, Minnie or Rance. The idea was admirable but, or so it seems to me, the execution wasn't very successful. The miners are raucous and lively but not especially musical and they diffuse the focus, which should be centered on the rivalry for Minnie's love. Rather than the soaring melodies of his earlier operas, Puccini writes in a more-or-less continuous arioso, the effect sometimes as ponderous as in some parts of Wagner--not at all the thing sought by devotees of Italian opera. "Ch'ella mi creda," when it finally comes, is a vastly welcome relief, but too little and too late.

Minnie is a immensely difficult role for the soprano. The great Birgit Nilsson regarded Minnie as more of a challenge than Turandot. In his memoirs, Rudolf Bing seemed still a little shellshocked when he reported that Leontyne Price, for whom a production of "La fanciulla" had been mounted at the Met, proved not strong enough and had to drop out halfway through her second performance, giving it over to Eleanore Steber. On this recording, Minnie is Gigliola Frazzoni, a dramatic soprano with a good Italian career who did not become an international star. She is excellent. Franco Corelli, sounding fabulous is Johnson. Tito Gobbi, wisely emphasizing the dramatic rather than the musical side of Sheriff Rance, is also terrific. The smaller parts are handled by familiar stalwarts of mid-century La Scala, and very well done. Votto, the conductor, is his usual forgettable self, but he at least doesn't harm anything.

Go elsewhere for sound reproduction. Five stars for the performance!

WHEN I BUY A HISTORICAL PERFORMANCE FROM THE FIFTIES, I BRACE MYSELF FOR WHAT I KNOW THE SOUND WILL BE: MOSTLY POOR. IN THIS RECORDING, HOWEVER, IT IS COMPENSATED BY THE SINGING OF THE PRINCIPALS. GOBBI AND CORELLI ARE BOTH TOTALLY ADDICTIVE, AND GIGLIOLA FRAZZONI DELIVERS. BUT I STILL NEED ANOTHER SET, HOPEFULLY IN BETTER SOUND AND WITH A LIBRETTO!

Although I do not think that "Fanciulla" is Puccini's greatest work it contains a wealth of lovely music, not least big, well-known arias and some tender love music. It's true that the Americanisms - everyone bawling "Hellooo" - and the rather ghastly, patronising depiction of Native Americans going "Ugh!" are rather grating, and there is more than a hint of sentimentality about the plot, but it can be a blast when performed by a cast as good as this. Corelli is clearly in spectacular voice, Gobbi is suitably snarling and subtle as the sheriff, Jack Rance, while Gigliola Frazzoni turns in a truly startling performance as Minnie; wild and wonderful, with the occasional mis-fire but some of the most heartfelt and gutsy singing you'll ever hear froma dramatic soprano. Unfortunately, the sound is pretty wretched compared with Tebaldi and Del Monaco's excellent studio, stereo Decca recording - only what you'd expect for a 1956 stage performance but hard going when the distortions and fuzziness so obscure the sound picture. Only buy this as a supplement - it's cheap enough, especially on Marketplace - but don't expect much aurally; it's pretty dim and disappointing.

Presumably Opera D'Oro and Gala use unauthorized recordings, from the audience, at least up to 1970. The sound in this 1956 performance is so bad it is difficult to judge the singers. Gobbi and Corelli were stars, but you would not know it. Frazzoni is an unknown, doomed by the recording. Some mistakenly try to place this opera alongside the composer's works of genius. The Americanisms are hokey, the music could be rejects from Boheme, Butterfly and Turandot. The finale is affecting, but the opera's absence from the stage is condign.