Giuseppe Verdi (1813 – 1901)
Noble Renegades
Scenes and Arias
Charles Castronovo (tenor)
Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra/Constantine Orbelian
rec. 2022, Kaunas State Philharmonic Hall, Lithuania
Sung texts with English translation enclosed
Reviewed as 16bit 44 FLAC download
Delos DE 3505 [56]
American tenor Charles Castronovo has of late become an avid recording artist in complete operas as well as various recital programmes. I heard him back in 2011 in Stockholm at a Gala concert celebrating the 100th anniversary of Jussi Björling. This was fairly early in his career and I was immediately attracted by the beauty of his voice and his stylish delivery, and today when he is in his late 40s he has preserved those qualities admirably. I don’t remember what he sang on that occasion. I can’t consult my great collection of concert programmes any more, since it went in the dustbin a couple of years ago when we moved from our acceptably spacious house to a moderately sized flat.
Anyway, on this Verdi recital he sings two roles from Björling’s repertoire, Don Carlos and Un ballo in maschera, neither of which is preserved in studio recordings by Björling, but there exist live recordings of both. Apart from these two operas, which both belong to Verdi’s “mature” operas, i.e. from Rigoletto and further on, the rest of the programme consists of early operas. From the “galley years”, as Verdi himself called them, often created in great haste, due to tight deadlines. This doesn’t mean that the music was bad, but after the first ovations, most of these early operas rather quickly disappeared from the repertoire and were overshadowed by the later masterworks.
During the last half-century several have been restored, and can be seen at least occasionally beside the standard works. In many cases thanks to Philips’ series under Lamberto Gardelli with starry international casts with names like Montserrat Caballé, Katia Ricciarelli, Jessye Norman, Fiorenza Cossotto, Carlo Bergonzi, Plácido Domingo, José Carreras, Sherrill Milnes, Piero Cappuccilli and Ruggiero Raimondi. In particular, Carreras comes to mind when I listen to this disc. He was the most frequently represented of the tenors, and two of his roles are here: Jacopo Foscari in I due Foscari and Corrado in Il Corsaro. Several of the other roles have also been recorded by Carreras in other contexts: Don Carlos, Macbeth and Un ballo in Maschera, and there are in fact similarities between the two singers: besides the sense for nuances there is also the same deep and wholehearted involvement in the singing, something I wasn’t quite prepared to expect to hear from Castronovo. I have regarded him as a mainly lyrical singer, but here he stands out as a fully-fledged spinto tenor with the heft and volume and the brilliance to match in the upper regions of his voice.
In the foreword to this issue, Castronovo looks back to his early career, and recalls that Verdi has been a continuous source of inspiration to him, from the first opera aria he ever heard on a record – Otello’s Esultate! This explosion by a Heldentenor forever estranged him from the music that he thither to had admired, Led Zeppelin, The Doors and The Beatles, and made him dream of a life with opera. Once he began his professional life, his first Verdi role was Gastone, a comprimario role in La traviata. From there, in due time he was promoted to Alfredo in the same opera, the most lyrical of the major tenor roles, and step by step he has advanced into the lirico spinto roles. Too many promising tenors have been over-eager to take on the heavy roles too early, foreshortening their careers by several years. Two of the saddest examples were Giuseppe Di Stefano and José Carreras. Castronovo has, cleverly, hurried slowly and now at fifty soon, his voice still is in mint condition. Whether he is contemplating adding Otello to his role gallery is an open question.
One of the things that separates this issue from the traditional recital – besides the fact that there are quite a few relative rarities – is that Castronovo opts for complete scenes and not only separate arias. This means that there are other singers involved, as well as chorus a couple of times. This contributes to a significant degree to the feeling that this is not another stand-up-and-sing programme, but gives a sense of the opera stage.
That sense is not very obvious in the opening scene of Don Carlos – it is sung in the original French, hence the title. The Fontainebleau forest which, when the curtain was raised, was swarming with foresters, is empty, and Elisabeth and her entourage with huntsmen have passed by, when Carlos, sad disillusioned, comes out of the dark forest at sunset. I would have liked to include that short choral scene as a contrasting, lively backdrop to Carlos’ distress. With a total playing of 56 minutes there was space for it, but the moving scene is sensitively moulded with plaintive tone, so there is no reason whatsoever to complain.
I due Foscari is also represented by a scene from the first act. The opera takes place in Venice in the 15th century, and here we are outside the Council Chamber of the Doge Palace. Jacopo Foscari has been living in exile, accused of murder, and here he expresses in his aria his joy at seeing Venice again. But when on the verge of entering the chamber he is told that he can expect the council to be merciful, he breaks out in a violent cabaletta. “Liar”, he says to the officer, “Only atrocious hatred exists within their souls. They will undertake a bloody, horrific war.” This dramatic high point is sung with formidable glow, and a parallel with Carreras’ reading is unavoidable – and I can’t say that Castronovo comes off second best. Tomas Pavilionis in the role of officer hasn’t many bars to sing, but they are essential for the understanding of the situation.
Macduff’s aria from Macbeth is a self-contained number, but it is certainly a horrible document of the evil in the world. Riccardo’s big aria from the last act of Un ballo in maschera is a heart-rending interior monologue, where he is torn between his honour and duty and his love to Amelia. This scene is so essential to understand the character of the Governor of Boston (or King of Sweden as it was in the original), that it is a mystery that Jussi Björling, as far as we know, never sang it. Both are sung with aplomb here.
In I Lombardi alla prima crociata – to give it its full title – the crusaders have been marauding in the Antioch territories against the Muslim armies. The Christian Giselda has been captured and is now held captive in the ruler’s harem. The ruler’s head wife, Sofia, is secretly a Christian, and when she finds out that her son Oronte is in love with Giselda, she sees a possibility to convert him to Christianity. He sings his aria La mia letizia infondere, where he declares that it is his wish “to go with her to heaven”, which is the librettist’s poetic circumlocution of “wanting to marry her”. “But think, you cannot make her yours if you do not prostrate first to the [Christian] God of her fathers”, says Sofia. And Oronte accepts. Both Sofia and her son are in heaven, and Oronte expresses his happiness in the ecstatic cabaletta Come poteva un angelo. I think that this is a unique liaison between a Muslim man and a Christian woman in the annals of opera. American soprano Kristin Sampson is an expressive Sofia.
I Lombardi premiered in 1843 and became enormously popular. A few years later, Verdi was invited to write an opera for Paris, and instead of composing a completely new work he chose to revise I Lombardi. However, he needed to adjust the libretto to suit French taste, and when the new work was premiered at the Salle Le Peletier in late November 1847 under the title Jérusalem, the original work was in Verdi’s own words “transformed out of recognition”. It has never been established as an independent work, even though it has had occasional revivals. The story is long and complicated. Suffice it to say that in the third act, Gaston has unjustly been condemned by the Pope and will be executed the next day. In the aria, he pleads that his honour should remain intact.
In the second act of Luisa Miller, Luisa’s beloved Rodolfo gets a letter from her, in which she has been forced to write that she will be leaving him for another. This leads to the most famous aria in the opera, Quando le sere al placido, followed by a dramatic scene where Rodolfo confronts both Wurm, Luisa’s supposed lover, and his own father, Count Walter. The excellent bass Tadas Girininkas appears as Wurm as well as Count Walter.
Based on Lord Byron’s best-selling poem, Le corsaire (1814) also inspired Berlioz to compose his colourful overture in 1844, and thus predates Verdi’s opera by a few years. Il Corsaro takes place on a Greek island in the Aegean. The island is controlled by the corsairs, whose leader, Corrado, is in exile. He laments his situation in an aria, but gets a message that the Muslims are a threat and orders his crew to be prepared for an attack within an hour and in the cabaletta he triggers them to fight: “To arms, and intrepid let’s swoop on that impious crescent moon; the perfidious will be taught a lesson by whatever strength we can muster!” This is swashbuckling music of the same kind that Korngold so memorably created for Errol Flynn films in the 1930s Hollywood films. Testosterone-laden and not the least sophisticated, but a vitalising end to a stimulating programme with lots of atmosphere from the stage. That Constantine Orbelian and his orchestra and chorus in Kaunas are first class in every respect when it comes to opera recordings has almost become an axiom and the Delos recording team can be proud of this project.
Göran Forsling
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Contents:
Don Carlos
1. Fontainebleau ! Forêt immense et solitaire
2. Je l’ai vue
I due Foscari
3. Qui ti rimani
4. Dal più remoto esilio
5. Del consiglio alla presenza … Odio solo, ed odio atroce 3:07
with Tomas Pavilionis (tenor)
Macbeth
6. O figli, o figli miei … Ah, la paterna mano
Un ballo in maschera
7. Forse la soglia attinse … Ma se m’è forza perderti
I Lombardi
8. O madre mia, che fa colei
9. La mia letizia infondere
10. Oh ! ma pensa, che non puoi
11. Come poteva un angelo
with Kristin Sampson (soprano)
Luisa Miller
12. Il foglio dunque?
13. Quando le sere al placido
14. Di me chiedeste
15. L’ara, o l’avello apprestami
with Tomas Pavilionis (tenor), Tadas Girininkas (bass) and the Kaunas State Choir
Jérusalem
16. L’infamie ! Prenez ma vie!
Il corsaro
17. Ah, sì, ben dite
