Pavarotti - Bellini

The programme opens with an excerpt from Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi; also with a fascinating glimpse of the thirty-two-year-old Pavarotti on stage at La Scala. This was his second season in the house, where he had sung previously in La Bohème and Rigoletto and was soon to enjoy a huge success in La Fille du régiment. It may seem odd, therefore, to find him, for the second and last time in his career (the other was at Glyndebourne where he sang Idamante to Richard Lewis’s Idomeneo), serving as second tenor. There should indeed be only one tenor in the opera, for Bellini cast his Romeo as a mezzo-soprano, singing in the travesti, or trouser-role, tradition; the Milan management, however, decided to alter that, and, having been bold in reviving the rarely-heard opera, resorted to cowardice in re-casting Romeo as a tenor. That the richly gifted Jaime (Giacomo) Aragall was the tenor in question no doubt made some amends, but the substitution was a travesty (in a different sense) for it distorts the blending and balancing of the voices and involves textual modifications. Pavarotti’s role of Tebaldo is an effective one but relatively short. Despite the name, he is not a counterpart to Shakespeare’s fiery Tybalt but, more like Paris in the play, Juliet’s intended husband. His solo comes early in Act 1, with Tebaldo telling his fellow Capulets of his love for Juliet and his zeal to fight the Montagues. Admirably, the young tenor combines an incisive tone and energetic attack with an appreciation of the singing-style essential in Bellini: respect for the unbroken phrase and for the preservation of the vocal graces even in the most stressful dramatic utterance. The audience clearly recognizes that this is no ordinary second-tenor and shows appreciation in its turn.

Pavarotti’s major roles in the Bellini repertoire have been Elvino in La sonnambula and Arturo in I Puritani. The first re-introduced him to Covent Garden, virtually constituting a second debut. He had appeared in La Bohème, gaining good notices but not as part of an event which attracted much critical attention in itself. That was in 1963. Two years later he was back for La traviata; but it was really the new Sonnambula production, the first at the Royal Opera House since 1911 in Tetrazzini’s time, that aroused interest. Sutherland’s admirers came from near and far to find whether her Amina in this opera would match the phenomenal Lucia of 1959, and lovers of Italian opera generally were hopeful that the once-famous favourite of prima donnas would prove worthy of reinstatement. One thing they certainly found was a first-rate lyric tenor, new to most of them. He drew an elegantly slender line with a voice that was free in its production, pure in quality, sweet in tone. The popular sensation, "the Pavarotti phenomenon", was to come the next season with the high spirits and high Cs of La Fille du régiment, but in truth the revelation was manifest in the less spectacular achievements of this Sonnambula.

I Puritani was another opera he sang with Sutherland (ten performances at the Metropolitan in 1976), but it had come into his repertoire earlier in Bellini’s home town at the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania (1968), with later performances at Bologna and Philadelphia. The role is notoriously difficult, and Pavarotti is quoted as regarding his success in it as crowning his career. Certainly it set a seal upon his career as a singer of Bellini, whose operas now disappeared from his stage-repertory, the roles in Beatrice di Tenda (his first complete opera recording for Decca) and Norma being sung on records only.

Of the remaining operas represented here, two (I Lombardi and Ernani) have been performed on stage, the others only in these recorded excerpts. The arias by Donizetti are rarities but became familiar through records made long ago by the great Caruso. Pavarotti still venerates Caruso: "To me, Caruso is rightly the tenor against whom all the rest of us are measured", and, interestingly, "He came closer than any of us to the truth of the music he sang" (Pavarotti: My Own Story, New York 1981). There is no question, however, of imitation, and these arias are good examples of both influence and independence.

The main Donizetti repertoire is covered in the first CD of this series, as is Verdi in the third and fourth. The arias included in this present volume have a special interest nevertheless: chronologically I Lombardi (1843), Ernani (March 1844), I due Foscari (November 1844) and Attila (1846). All except Ernani went into eclipse during the late nineteenth century. In more recent years, like other operas of their time, they have been revalued and more sympathetically heard. I Lombardi, set against an historical background of the first Crusade, has what must be one of the least coveted of roles for the leading tenor, who dies before the last act and suffers the further indignity of seeing himself replaced by the second tenor. Pavarotti sang in seven performances of the opera at Rome in 1969 and recorded it in the wake of a new Metropolitan production in 1994. Ernani was another of his operas at the Met, and new to his repertoire in 1983; the recording came a little later, re-uniting him with his close colleagues of the early years, Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge. The aria from I due Foscari was recorded in those very years but with Edward Downes as conductor: this was a reunion as well, for Downes had conducted Pavarotti’s very first recordings, the ones made on an inconspicuous extended-play disc in 1964, then lost to view and resurfacing only now, as a bonus for this Pavarotti Edition.

The last item in the recital is a bonus of a different kind. The premiere of Attila took place in Venice, where the tenor was Carlo Guasco, the original Ernani; but at La Scala in Milan the tenor there, Napoleone Moriani, required an aria to be specially written for him. Morlani fathered the two illegitimate children of Giuseppina Strepponi, Verdi’s lover and later his wife. The two men seem to have remained on amiable terms and it is a most lovely aria that Verdi wrote for him. With Pavarotti deploying his best legato style, it sounds almost Bellinian in the grace of its sadly flowing melody: a fitting end to this recital of music from the late age of bel canto opera.