Jacques Fromental Halévy (1799-1862)
La Juive (1835)
Eléazar: José Carreras (tenor)
Rachel: Julia Varady (soprano)
Leopold: Dalmacio Gonzales (tenor)
Princess Eudoxie: June Anderson (soprano)
Cardinal Brogni: Ferruccio Furlanetto (bass)
Albert: René Schirrer (bass-baritone)
Ruggiero: René Massis (baritone)
The Ambrosian Chorus
Philharmonia Orchestra/Antonio de Almeida
rec. August 1986, London; February 1989, Munich (Carreras’ role dubbed in)
French libretto & English, German & Italian translations
Philips 420 190-2 [3 CDs: 183]

I recently admiringly reviewed a Malibran disc of excerpts and highlights from this opera and refer you to that review for some background and information on alternative recordings. I mentioned this recording in the opening paragraph and on realising that it had never been reviewed on MusicWeb International, decided to do so, as it is still available.

A full, uncut performance of this opera would last over four hours and has probably never actually been performed. This Philips recording has been rendered manageable for presentation on three discs and runs to just over three hours – more than half an hour longer than the live Opera d’Oro concert version, which is on two discs and does not include the inevitable ballet music. As the note on the score informs us, the cuts made here “included several spectacular crowd scenes, so beloved of Grand Opera, drinking choruses, and so on. The chorus opening Act V was cut”, as is “Eudoxie’s aria `Je l’ai revu’ in favour of her show stopping Bolero, one of three fine pieces included in this recording though cut in the Schlesinger’s full score…. We also included the ballet scene…because ballet was such an indispensable element of Grand Opera.”

There is no doubt that following his recovery from leukaemia, by the time when Carreras, two and a half years later, came to record his music over a week, to be dubbed in, his voice had lost some of its sheen and his top notes could pulse somewhat, but he still sounds impassioned and committed and is really much better than might have been expected, even if he cannot bring to the role of Eléazar the baritonal heft and squillo of Caruso, or the sheer animal energy of Tucker. June Anderson is as good as I have ever heard her anywhere and I am glad her catchy Bolero has been restored to her, but the best singing of all comes from Julia Varady who is absolutely stunning as Rachel: thrilling top notes, plenty of lower register heft and the ability to fill every line with beauty of tone and depth of emotion. Her French is very good, Carreras’ and Ferruccio Furlanetto’s not bad and Gonzales’ audibly Hispanic but that’s not a deal-breaker – and we have two native-speaker Renés in the supporting cast. I am less happy with Furlanetto’s throaty, growly bass; it seems to me that Bonaldo Giaiotti in the RCA highlights disc – also conducted by de Almeida – and David Gwynne in the concert performance both have more properly clean, round, resonant voices and are much less inclined to grab and squeeze notes.

There maybe a few moments of routine and rum-ti-tum in this opera but there are also so many fine arias, duets, trios and ensembles – beyond the justly famous “Rachel, quand du Seigneur” – that I think it is decidedly superior to Meyerbeer’s frequently humdrum and rather self-consciously florid output; it does not sound especially French despite setting the mould for what we recognise as Parisian Grand Opera and very often has the melodic invention and rhythmic impetus of early Verdi – who in 1835 had yet to have his first opera staged. There is even a touch of Wagner about the crowd scenes. Halévy was of Jewish background but not “practising”, as it were, and there is nothing specifically Jewish about the music except for the atmospheric Passover scene opening Act II, where in fact he does not recycle any authentic Hebrew melodies but succeeds in writing convincingly noble and moving music, creating a very prayerful ambience. Every character has his or her own big scene and is not without psychological interest (even if the tenor is a prize, two-timing rotter) – and of course, the complex and conflicted Eléazar is often compared with Shakespeare’s Shylock; Caruso went to great lengths to get the costume and gestures right for his portrayal of the Jewish patriarch.

This is in fact the only option if you want a studio recording of the (more or less) complete opera but I recommend also hearing Richard Tucker in either the highlights or the live concert for a more stirring, visceral experience and the whiff of greasepaint – and in both, his co-singers are excellent.

Ralph Moore

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