Beatrice di Tenda : Bel Canto is Divine When Gruberova & Kasarova Sing Together!
Written: Jul 11 '06 (Updated Apr 19 '08)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Bellini's beautiful vocal score. All the cast of bel canto specialists in wonderful voice
Cons: some coughs from the audience are louder than the others...
The Bottom Line: A much forgotten gem of a bel canto opera beautifully sung. Gruberova in wonderful voice. Very young Kasarova with thrillin upper range.
|
|
|
| smorg's Full Review: Bellini: Beatrice di Tenda / Steinberg, Gruberova,... |
Vincenzo Bellini's 'BEATRICE DI TENDA', A bel canto opera in 2 acts.
It's a shame this Bellini opera isn't performed much nowadays. It is everything a great bel canto opera should be. It has some of Bellini's most simplistically beautiful tunes in it while having a more compelling (read more believable) story line than his bigger hits like La Sonnambula or Norma.
Beatrice is the wife of Filippo Visconti, the Duke of Milan... But Filippo is in love with Agnese, so he plots to get rid of his wife by accusing her of having an affair with Orombello (whom Agnese loves, but who is in love with Beatrice). Agnese seconds the false accusation (she can't have Orombello and doesn't want Beatrice to have him). Quite a few changes of heart in the course of the opera ensue, but Beatrice is the constant good gal who loses her head but retains her dignity in the end.
This is a live CD recording from a rather heavily cut (most of the B sections except for those of Beatrice are cut) performance in Vienna in 1992 conducted by Pinchas Steinberg and featuring arguably the greatest coloratura soprano (since Sutherland) Edita Gruberova in the title role of Beatrice. Igor Morosow is vocally reliable as Filippo, Don Bernardini shows off his gorgeous tenor voice as Orombello (making me wish that his role is a bit longer than it is on this CD), and there is the superstar mezzo to be Vesselina Kasarova displaying impressive upper register and dramatic commitment as Agnese, the young protégé who brings down her mistress.
The Slovak soprano Frau Gruberova not only makes the very difficult music of Beatrice sounds easy, she is a superb voice actress... an extraordinary thing for a coloratura soprano! The only thing that might be called a flaw is her fondness of portamenting into high notes (sliding into them from a lower pitch so you hear o-O that starts low and ends high instead of just a one pitch 'O'). Though if you can just ignore that, she is technically superb in every way. And on the non-technical front, she can laugh or cry, etc, with her voice without actually miming laughing or crying. You just hear the emotions in the voice. That isn't something that can be said of most singers today! Her 'Ah! se un'urna e a me concessa' brought the house down... and then she tops it off with the closing aria!
The young Bulgarian-Swiss mezzo Frau Kasarova sounds a bit strange to me... It is as if she has this wild beast of an upper register that she just managed to keep it under control.. very thrilling (and very young!). This show being in Vienna where the orchestra is tuned higher than usual might be the reason why she sounds more like a spinto soprano on this CD than a deep mezzo she really is. Her opening harp accompanied aria Ah! non pensar che pieno is one of the most simple and beautiful thing Bellini ever wrote, IMO. This is one of the first recordings of hers and it already shows how dramatically committed she is to her character. And she is most compelling when doing duets and other ensemble numbers than in solos. It is almost eerie hearing her numbers with Frau Gruberova. They sound like the same voice shifted a few notes upward or downward. Not just the vocal timbre, but the pathos as well.. giving an unsettling effect of the 2 voices in the same head singing to herself. I find it mesmerizing.
Bellini's ensemble pieces in this opera are drop dead gorgeous. The ensemble that ends Act I is superb, and I dare anyone to restrain from hitting the repeat button at the end of the Act II trio Angiol di pace instead of listening to the whole opera in one go. This trio, to me, ranks up there with Der Rosenkavalier's ending trio as the most beautiful in opera. Maestro Steinberg leads the ORF-Symphony Orchestra in a precise and idiomatic manner, taking great care not to drown out his singers (great for us audience.... probably very scary for the singers, they are VERY exposed).
Sample from this CD: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nDF9SZevIA (Act II trio: Angiol di pace)
If you are a bel canto fan, this is a great CD to go for. It displays bel canto singing at its best. The sound is very good for a live recording with some coughing in the audience occasionally (not excessive, tho).
There are 2 CDs. The opera is sung in Italian.
Booklet contains track listing, photos of all the principals, note on the history of the opera, synopsis, and libretto in German, English and Italian.
Recommended:
Yes
Great Music to Play While: Romancing
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
smorg
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Member: Smorg
Location: Southern California, USA
Reviews written: 208
Trusted by: 307 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.