Customer Reviews

Verdi: Alzira

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

 

 

It is unfortunate that so many of Verdi's early scores are known only through recordings. That being said, this recording is revelatory. Until Philips took the initiative to provide complete digital recordings of the works missing from their Complete Verdi Edition, the only recording of "Alzira" was an early 1980's affair on Orfeo featuring Ileana Cotrubas and Francisco Araiza. Though a fine recording in its own right, the Orfeo set is easily outclassed by its newer rival. Verdi's Peruvian love story is set to a plushly early Romantic score, and the melodic inspiration is, as always with Verdi, quite high. The soprano role has the benefit of some uniquely effective (and not merely exhibitionist) coloratura writing, and the role is well-sung throughout by Russian soprano Marina Mescheriakova. When I saw Ms. Mescheriakova sing the "Trovatore" Leonora at the Met in December 2000, I was most impressed by the purity of her phrasing and the way in which careful projection of her bright tone can produce stunningly beautiful pianissimi. This is in evidence throughout this recording--a considerable accomplishment. Finer still is Ramon Vargas' performance as her lover. Using his essentially light lyric voice with extraordinary refinement, Vargas sings Verdi's sweeping melodies with finesse and complete technical assurance, and the darkness of the lower voice altogether qualifies him for the heroic aspects of the role. If Vargas continues on the path evidenced by this recording, he will quickly and deservedly join Carlo Bergonzi (whom he resembles at times) and the young Jose Carreras among the upper eschelon of Verdian tenors. I also heard baritone Paolo Gavanelli at the Met, in the title role of "Rigoletto" in December 1999. Despite the slight bleat in his tone, Gavanelli impresses with his innate musicality and the bright, open quality of his distinct timbre. The core to Gavanelli's voice is quite firm, and the top notes are both well-centered and beautifully deep-toned. Gavanelli's performance of the finale, his grand scene of moral awakening, is the climax of an otherwise rather banal role. Fabio Luisi conducts his mostly excellent orchestra in a thoroughly competent, committed reading of the score which is well within what one's expectations for rhythmic fervor in a younger Verdi score. All things considered, an outstanding achievement, worthy of the tribute to the centennial of the composer's death.

And the answer is the plot. While it is easy to climb on the critical bandwagon and deplore Verdi's early works, true opera lovers have recognized the true beauty in the maestro's early works, and Philips has to be congratulated for producing some consistantly excellent recordings of these treasures. The company has, over the years, employed the finest voices and conductors to bring early Verdi to us, and Alzira is consistantly fine from beginning to end. What it lacks in plot that failed to please mid 19th century operagoers, it more than makes up in musical intensity and lyrical beauty. All of the principal singers are excellent in their roles. Ramon Vargas is an exciting new tenor, whose recent CD of Verdi arias should be a "must have". If he avoids the temptation to perform heavier roles, his spinto voice shoul please us for years. Marina Mescheriakova is evidence that we still have fine Verdi sopranos around. She has a meltingly lovely voice and fine interpretive skills. Baritone Gavanelli is good, but not great, in the role of Gusmano. Maestro Luisi conducts with a brisk but authoritative touch. The recording is outstanding sonically. A Verdi fan? Buy it now! Interested in learning more about Verdi or opera? Ditto!

I confess it - I love early Verdi. I am always drawn to new recordings of works like this because with a fine cast and conductor they usually give great pleasure. So it is here in the much maligned "Alzira". The main drawbacks of the piece are dramatic, not musical - the plot is very thin, and the characters don't develop to any significant extent. We are left with stock situations in a rather exotic location, and I'm sure that the opera would be a total headache to bring to the stage.

Luckily, it clearly can be made to work in the recording studio. The music is middling Verdi with patches of excellence. For example, Alzira's Act 1 reverie, her duet with Gusman in Act 2 (echoes of Leonora and di Luna, anyone?), Zamoro's aria and cabaletta in the same act and the finale - a really fine ensemble which tells us that this composer will eventually write Act 3 of Otello. Certainly much of the music is rather formulaic and it lacks the genius and inventiveness of later works, but I'd rather hear middle-of-the-road Verdi than a lot of what we encounter.

The recording is excellent - La Suisse Romande, under Fabio Luisi, give real verve and drive to the score. Mescheriakova has a gorgeously rich, bright soprano over which she has ample control of dynamics and enough agility to sketch in the occasional coloratura flights. She make as much as she can of the title role which must be a frustrating sing, as her music and character are just too limited for her performance truly to take flight. Vargas, too, has some really heroic moments in the context of an attractive, lyrical vocal performance, the best I have yet heard from this valuable young tenor, and Gavanelli (though his fast vibrato and slender tone limit his dramatic effectiveness) turns in a creditable performance. Smaller roles are unexceptionable.

A find, then - it's not a masterpiece, but there's plenty to keep Verdi-curious or Verdi-loving listeners occupied, and the performance is very good indeed.

This is a good recording of this opera. Vargas has a lovely voice, as does Mescheriakova. There are definitely some gems in this otherwise strange opera. The scene which opens with Alzira is beatiful. And while this is a good recording the best recording of this opera remains the Gardelli conducted Alzira, featuring Vargas fellow mexican Araiza, with the incomparable Cotrubas, Rootering, and Bruson. The recording is in good sound, and while it may not be packaged as pretty. It is by far superior.

Dentro de la gran producción lírica del maestro Verdi, conformada por 28 óperas, ciertamente hay un grupo de títulos que conforman una faceta muy poco divulgada. En oposición a muchas óperas donde se sustenta la gran popularidad verdiana, figura otro pequeño grupo integrado principalmente por: "Oberto", "Jerusalem", "La batalla de Legnano", "El corsario", "Aroldo" y "Alzira".

Hablemos de "Alzira, entonces...

El tema de esta ópera - no elegido por Verdi - era un drama de Voltaire, estrenado en 1736, titulado "Alzira o Los Americanos".

"Alzira" posee la particularidad de emplazarse en América, concretamente en el Perú, a mediados del Siglo 16, esto es en pleno período de las conquistas españolas. Tiene también la especial característica de ser una ópera inusualmente breve dentro del repertorio verdiano. Su duración es de sólo 1 hora y media.

Por documentos y testigos se tiene constancia de que, sin dudas pecando de lo que hoy puede calificarse de franca exageración, Giuseppe Verdi nunca vio calidad en "Alzira" e incluso llego a despreciarla.

Se dice que años más tarde Verdi se habría referido a "Alzira" con la dura sentencia "Quella e proprio bruta" ("Es verdaderamente horrible"). No obstante la oscuridad en que se sumió "Alzira" por mucho tiempo, el siglo 20 sería generoso con ella.

En 2001, con motivo de conmemorarse los 100 años de la muerte de Verdi, el sello Philips editó una grabación de "Alzira".

Esta obra tiene méritos considerables, sobre todo en los finales. Les recomiendo que escuchen de esta obra ---> Scena e cavatina: "Riposa. Tutte in sour, dolor vegliante... Da Gusman", además del "aria e cabaletta" de Zamoro del Acto I.

Marina Mescheriakova refulge (acompañada por la orquesta: La Suisse Romande)como la princesa Inca (Alzira), pero es La soprano Monserrat Caballé la que la canta magistralmente!!...

As is often the case with early Verdi, we have only a couple of recordings of the opera to choose from and very rarely the chance to see it live - and invariably one of those recording choices will be conducted by Lamberto Gardelli as part of his early Verdi series for Philips or, as in this case, another from the continuation of the series begun around the year 2000 after a hiatus.

In general, those more modern sets are less starry and successful than those from the 70's, especially when it comes to the quality of the singing. It does not augur well when the first solo voice you hear is the wobbly, nasal, Slavic bass who sings the saintly old Alvaro - atrociously. Scarcely any better is the baritone who attempts Alzira's father, Ataliba. Things pick up with the neat, lean tenor of Ramon Vargas, a size too small for the part but very musical, and any deficiency of volume is compensated for by the vast, unwieldy, microphone-shattering soprano of Marina Mescheriakova, who in their duet tends to cast Vargas in the male spider role. Still, it's a pleasure to hear a Verdi soprano who really sings out and she makes the most of little in her role as the eponymous heroine; she is equally capable of singing softly, with well-controlled, floating pianissimi. I wish her vibrato were less intrusive; Vargas seems to be the only singer who has real control over that fundamental vocal weapon. Hence we take a vocal step backwards with Paolo Gavanelli's odd baritone: at full stretch he has good, evenly pulsing top notes and a strong sense of drama, but frequently lapses into crooning, when a really distracting tremolo obtrudes and makes him sound very unsteady and bleaty. Baritones like Panerai, Tibbett and Gobbi managed a fast vibrato without sounding like billy-goats, methinks.

Luisi conducts his good orchestra con gusto and with a strong sense of pace and shape; musical ideas flow thick and fast, and in this almost too compact, even frantic, opera lasting only an hour and a half, there is little time for swooning over the finer emotions and very few still points apart from the odious, two-dimensional Gusman's slavering over Alzira "Eterna la memoria" and the reminiscences narrated by Alzira herself on her first appearance.

The Geneva chorus are really excellent and sound as if they are enjoying themselves singing all that old commentary tosh which is so often their lot. I have heard only the snippets of the other recording with Cotrubas, Araiza and Bruson but it sounds very acceptable and attracts quite approving comments. Cotrubas was an affecting artist and although I don't much care for either Araiza or Bruson, the latter is less irritating than Gavanelli and, on balance, I think I would prefer it. However, I imagine that either set will satisfy the Verdi completist - such as the prospective purchaser is likely to be. Despite the weak libretto and silly plot which asks you to accept the feat of a triple escape by Zamoro and Gusman's last-minute conversion from being Mr Vile for the entire opera to Mr Holy in the last five minutes, there is some stirring stuff here without it being top-drawer Verdi. Verdi himself was guilty of a rare error of judgement in asserting that the opera would endure but it's not too hard to see why it has languished.

Source: Studio recording made at Victoria Hall, Geneva, June 29-July 2, 1999.

Sound: Contemporary DDD standard.

Documentation: Libretto in German, Italian, English and French. Timed track listings. Summary of plot by act, keyed to recorded tracks. Portrait of Verdi at about the time of the premier of the opera. Photographs of the conductor and three most important principal singers. Essay on the circumstances of the opera's composition, its early performance history and status within Verdi's canon. No biographical information on cast or conductor. Nothing on the origin of this recording, save that it was done with the support of the Ville de Geneve.

Format: Two discs of 14 and 7 tracks, respectively. Total timing: 91:38.

"Alzira" is a much-maligned opera. It's most formidable critic was Giuseppe Verdi, who used the word "bruta"--ugly--to describe it. Unlike other ugly ducklings of his hatching, he disdained even to attempt to make improvements to it. "Alzira" dates from what Verdi called his years in the galley. It is one of three operas he composed and staged in a twelve-month period.

Verdi was the first composer to take up the practice of composing operas for a publisher rather than an impresario. "Alzira" came at a time when Verdi was temporarily on the outs with his publisher, Ricordi, so it was given to a rival publisher.

"Alzira" is based on a work by Voltaire. In 1845, that was a bold choice for an Italian composer. (When Verdi's hero, the great Manzoni, was reconciled to the Church, not many years later, his spiritual advisor forced him to burn his set of the collected works of Voltaire.) The librettist, Salvatore Cammarano, who had written the text of Lucia di Lammermoor ten years earlier, made a pre-emptive strike on the censors by ruthlessly casting out all vestiges of philosophy and wit, leaving a plot that was hot-headed but dumb-as-a-post.

The plot, for what it is worth, revolves around the follies of Zamoro, a tenor so bone-headed that he makes that prize chump, Manrico, look positively canny by comparison. Zamoro is the heir to the throne of the Incas. Captured and tortured by the Spanish conquerors prior to the beginning of the opera, he has escaped and made his way back to the free remnants of his people in time for the prologue. Not wanting his happy homecoming spoiled by bloodshed, he pardons Alvaro, the captured governor of Peru and sends him home. On being informed that his betrothed, Alzira, is a guest/prisoner of the Spanish government in Lima, he rouses his tribe and their allies for an attack on the town.

Act I opens in Lima where old Alvaro is handing over power to his son, his newly appointed successor as governor of Peru. The son, Gusmanno, is--of course!--in love with the unresponsive Alzira. Zamoro, alone and unarmed sneaks into Alzira's chamber and even manages to exchange a few loving words with her before he is captured for the second time. Gusmanno turns up and trades hot words with Zamoro, who manages to spill the beans about the forthcoming attack. The saintly Alvaro begs his son for Zamoro's life in repayment for the Inca's sparing of his own. Freed for the second time, Zamoro departs for his army, vowing all manner of bodily harm on Gusmanno.

At the beginning of Act II, Spanish soldiers are whooping it up with a jolly drinking song. And why shouldn't they? They have steam-rollered Zamoro's little rebellion and are watching the chain-laden survivors among their enemies stagger by. Zamoro, captured for the third time, has been condemned by the Spanish council and is awaiting the chop. Just as Gusmanno is about to sign the death warrant, Alzira offers her hand in exchange for Zamoro's life. Meanwhile, back in the jungle, the war leader of the Incas reveals how he has used gold, so beloved by the Spaniards, as a bribe for Zamoro's release. Free for the third time, Zamoro turns up. On learning that Alzira is about to marry Gusmanno, Zamoro decides that he has been ill-used and betrayed. The only thing he can think to do is abandon his people and run off to Lima--again. In Lima, Gusmanno is just about to marry Alzira when a man leaps out of the crowd and stabs him. It's Zamora, of course. He is promptly captured for the fourth time. Gusmanno, dying, hears Zamoro denounce Alzira for unfaithfulness. Fading away but still game, Gusmanno, explains to his homicidal rival that Alzira was just marrying to save Zamoro's life. He joins to two lovers, blesses them and expires while seeking his own blessing from the saintly Alvaro.

(A speculative question: could Don Alvaro of "La forza del destino" be the son of Alzira and Zamora, and named after the aforesaid saintly individual?)

Musically, "Alzira" rises above its beef-witted plot. Although there is not sign of a hit tune anywhere in it, its choruses rollick and its finales roll on triumphantly. The texture of the piece is fully Verdian and surprisingly enjoyable, provided one pays no attention to the silly story.

Ramon Vargas does very well as Zamora, although the role cries out for Mario del Monaco at his most leather-lunged. Paolo Gavanelli, the Gusmanno, sings the lyric portions of his part with considerable elegance, although he tends to fade a bit in the more excited passages. Marina Mescheriakova has a thankless part as Alzira. She sings well-enough to make me want to hear her sing something offering more opportunity. The rest of the cast sings well. Both chorus and orchestra are in good form. Fabio Luisi's conducting is intelligent and propulsive.

A good performance of a Verdian semi-clunker is still worth five stars.

This Opera is a good try by Verdi and by Philips. The story and music match Ernani. One could say Alzira is an Ernani mock-up. In fact, as you listen to ALzira you will keep expecting Ernani. Every aria, ensemble, cabaletta starts off like the equivalent in Ernani and then goes nowhere. The orchestra, conducting and singing except for Gavanelli are very good. Gavanelli's nasal baritone and extreme tremolo will drive you to extraction. You will enjoy any of the Ernani's far more. I have three---Muti's being my favorite. If you must have something new from early Verdi, and you already have Ernani, go with Giovanna d'Arco, I Due Foscari, I Lombardi, Louisa Miller, I Masnadieri, Macbetto and Nabucco. Those with Monserrat Caballe
are outstanding.