Refice: Cecilia (Abridged)

Licinio Refice (Composer), Angelo Campori (Conductor), George Fourie (Performer), Harry Theyard (Performer), Renata Scotto (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: George Fourie, Harry Theyard, Renata Scotto
• Conductor: Angelo Campori
• Composer: Licinio Refice
• Audio CD (November 21, 1995)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Video Artists Int'l
• ASIN: B000003LJE
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #251,965 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #16 in Music > Classical > Opera & Vocal > Divas > Scotto, Renata

Track Listings

1. Prologue (The Annunciation): Per Amor Di Gesu Porgete I Cori... - Renata Scotto

2. Act I: (Finale): Cecilia, Non Ebbi Dianzi Possa D'Esprimere...

3. Act II: O, Il Tetro Monmorio Di Quella Folla!

4. Act II: Finale: Un'alba Gloriosa Mi Sbianca...

5. Act III - George Fourie/Harry Theyard/Renata Scotto

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why not the whole opera?, November 30, 2004

By 

J. Schiavone "JSS" (Whittier, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Refice: Cecilia (Abridged) (Audio CD)

Renata Scotto is in top form, well supported by the rest of the cast. She captures the fervent religiosity of this work, which was a favorite of Renata Tebaldi. I have a recording of the complete performance on LP. I just wish the whole thing had been put on CD, not only excerpts. This music of Licinio Refice reminds me of Puccini & Respighi. The orchestration is lush, with many quotations of plainchant woven throughout. Refice was a Roman Catholic priest. I was familiar with his liturgical music, but this work reveals his art more completely.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A RARITY WELL WORTH INVESTIGATING, August 7, 2006

By 

Klingsor Tristan (Suffolk) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Refice: Cecilia (Abridged) (Audio CD)

Anyone with a taste for Puccini at his sugariest, should love this piece. Rich and sweet as a zabaglione, there's nothing here to frighten anyone who can cope with Debussy (in St. Sebastien mode), Ravel or Respighi. Written in the early 30's, the harmonic and melodic vocabulary gives nary a hint that Schoenberg, Stravinsky or even Strauss had ever existed.

But, by its own lights, Cecilia is a ravishing piece. The prologue may well be familiar from Renata Tebaldi's gorgeous performance of it. And Scotto here on this VAI disc is nearly as good. Admittedly this is probably the finest music in the piece, but the other excerpts included here show a fine sense of colour and a real feeling for how to show off singers at their best in the finest Italianate traditions. Scotto's colleagues are not in her league and the tenor playing Valerian (Harry Theyard) in particular sounds a little stretched and overparted. But they do give an excellent idea of how exciting the piece could be in performance.

The vocal lines may not quite have Puccini's distinctiveness, but they are still memorable and apt. Much of the material is derived from plainsong and perhaps Refice's closest cousins are therefore Durufle and even Messiaen. But he is his own man with an individual voice and an adept touch at the richest of post-impressionist harmonies. The piece may be a rarity outside Italy but this disc is well worth investigating.

4.0 out of 5 stars A lush, devotional work of considerable beauty, August 24, 2011

By 

Ralph Moore "Ralph operaphile" (Bishop's Stortford, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Refice: Cecilia (Abridged) (Audio CD)

Previous reviewers have rightly praised this work which was rapturously received at its premiere in 1934, was a favourite vehicle for divas Claudia Muzio and Renata Tebaldi and is here rapturously sung by distinguished lirico-spinto soprano Renata Scotto in a live performance in 1976.

Her warm soprano caresses the long lines and is rarely troubled by the beat which was creeping in on high notes at this time. She is ably accompanied by tenor Harry Theyard, a native of New Orleans who has a light, flexible, attractive tenor, and the Italianate baritone of George Fourié as the Roman governor who condemns the martyrs. The music is a sensuous post-Puccinian wash of post-Impressionistic sound, employing themes from various liturgical, chant and plainsong sources. The tunes aren't always memorable but there is much to enjoy in the swooning, swirling chromatics of Refice's idiom. The piece is essentially a "sacra rappresentazione" or oratorio rather than an opera as such yet there not all the music is of the enervated variety as even in the selected excerpts of just over 70 minutes that we have here there are also passages of a celebratory and declamatory nature, such as that which opens the Third Act and the noble horn passage in Band 5 before Cecilia's ecstatic, valedictory apostrophe to God.

Oddly, the disc gives no information about the performance location, choir or orchestra. I know it was in the Lincoln Center and am assuming they are the New York Philharmonic and a (very professional-sounding) local chorus.

What no previous reviewer mentions is the sound quality, which is a veiled stereo - not bad but rather muffled with some background hiss and occasionally a champion cougher, especially at the start of the quiet Prologue. Hence four stars, not five.

Licinio Refice was a priest who aptly died when not yet seventy during a performance given by Renata Tebaldi in 1954. Let's hope this lovely devotional work added credit to his balance sheet.