RECORDS
Against the odds
RODNEY MILNES
Anyone concocting a parody of nineteenth- century opera would have to turn for inspira- tion to Donizetti's Anna Bolena. It has got the lot. The characters are drawn with all the psychological subtlety of Harrison Ains- worth and the situations in which they are placed are just those that Sullivan and Offen- bach were to get such musical fun out of later in the century.
Take the last scene. Anne Boleyn's reason has quite properly become operatically un- hinged—but not totally. After a finely pathe- tic aria she recovers her senses enough to converse with the Man She Loves, the Boy Who Loves Her and her brother, as they are all three led to execution. This is under- standably too much and a further lapse into delirium is marked by her singing 'Home Sweet Home' to some unexpected Italian words. Unbelievably banal offstage music occasions another spell of sanity—it cele- brates Henry yin's (tactlessly premature) marriage to Jane Seymour. Anne announces that she forgives her persecutors (though the rousing cabaletta Coppia iniqua suggests that she is damning them all to hell) before falling into her final swoon.
But all this is reckoning without Donizetti. The way in which he makes this farrago re- motely acceptable even to twentieth-century
ears is a powerful demonstration of what music can achieve. Moreover; the musical construction is well ahead of its time. It is strongly evidenced in the new recording (Decca sEr 446-9), which is virtually uncut. (This could only happen in a recording studio; apparently over four and half hours in the opera house for Donizetti would be too much, though no one thinks twice about paying Wagner the same compliment.) The composer is well served by the Vienna Opera Orchestra and Chorus, who perform with style and grace for Silvio Varviso. The chorus writing is particularly rewarding.
If the gates of heaven are to be unlocked by good intentions alone, then Elena Soulio- tis will in her own good time be leading the heavenly hosts in song. But this still promis- ing soprano cannot quite make her enormous voice do the things she plainly wants it to. Gusty phrasing, a tired wobble sad to hear in a singer still in her twenties, inability to cope with coloratura—these make for some painful moments. But she launches the Quin- tet Jo sentiti (a piece to set beside, if not above, the Lucia sextet) in style, and pulls off many of the big moments in the final scene.
Marilyn Home has got the technique for this music and her Giovanna Seymour is just what you would expect. Ghiaurov is a natural for Enrico vitt, though I could have done with more menace in the hunting scene, and John Alexander is a usefully robust tenor who wisely does not attempt things he cannot do, like trills. Janet Coster is out- standing as the Page whose unlikely public breast-baring offers proof of Anne's sup- posed guilt. Watch this space. In the bad old days, not long passed, when Mahler was still a curiosity, record collectors were grateful with what they could get, almost regardless of musical or recording quality. Nowadays, with everyone at him, standards of both are extremely high. The Sixth Symphony, that overpowering musical impression of impending doom, both per- sonal and collective, is not a happy work to listen to—even the tender andante suggests nostalgia for pleasure past rather than cur- rent relief.
The new recording by Georg Solti and the virtuoso Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Decca SET 469-70) is vivid and dramatic. The jagged rhythms of the scherzo and the throbbing ebb and flow of the andante are beautifully realised (listen to the solo horn playing in this latter movement). I would seriously question, though, the basic speed of the first movement, or rather both of them, for the brisk jog of the opening neces- sitates a definite slowing down for the Schwtingvoll tune at letter 8 (not required by Mahler), and when Solti picks up the original tempo again in the two bars before 10, the violin semi-quavers become danger. ously smudged. There are moments, too, in the last movement where I feel he presses on too hard, but by then not to have suc- cumbed to the splendour of the playing, the brilliance of the recorded sound and the sheer power of the music is to be hyper- critical.
The fourth side of the set is devoted to a gentle, deeply felt version of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen by Yvonne Minton. The elegiac melancholy comes as something of a relief.
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