It
is both a pleasure and an honor for me
to welcome the return today of our distinguished guest writer Gioacchino
Fiurezi Maragioglio, Italian industrialist from Naples, opera critic and
historian. Mr. Fiurezi Maragioglio was an intimate friend of the great Italian
tenor Giacomo Lauri Volpi, and is a life-time subscriber to the Teatro San
Carlo, one of the world's historically great opera houses. Mr. Fiurezi
Maragioglio's knowledge of Italian opera and opera singers —past and present—is
simply vast, and I do not believe that there is anyone among my acquaintances
whose knowledge exceeds his own, and there are precious few who could match it.
I know that I certainly could not. I am very pleased today to be able to feature his article on the great
Italian tenor Gianni Raimondi!
Gianni
Raimondi: The Star of La Scala in the Golden Age
By Gioacchino Fiurezi Maragioglio
Gianni Raimondi represents the best version
of the operatic singer. In addition to vocal endowments of exceptional quality,
Raimondi also possessed the correct technique, a fine musical sensitivity and
was a performer of great integrity; respected and lauded by both public and management. He had incredible staying power,
serving as a leading tenor at, among others, the Teatro alla Scala, for more
than twenty years, and remaining just as potent and relevant a performer in the
last years as in the first. Raimondi’s abilities enthralled even a young
Luciano Pavarotti, who would watch his idol for hours in the hope of mastering
his exemplary technique.
Though not especially large, Raimondi’s
instrument had the resonance and pure tone of a fine bell. It was a sharp
voice, poking through the orchestra and becoming mellifluous as it carried all
through the theater. It was also a very beautiful voice, and, as mentioned, one harnessed with impeccable technique.
The following recording shows Raimondi at
38, in his vocal prime, having been singing for about thirteen years, and
touring in South America with company no less illustrious than Leyla
Gencer! Here is A te, o cara, from the Teatro Colón, 1961:
Such singing of the role of Arturo is rarely
equalled. To have such color and authority in the treble register is uncommon
enough, let alone to sing a C-sharp of such quality and power! But Raimondi
does not content himself simply with a clarion top note: his legato is perfect,
the voice so smooth and evenly blended, produced without any hint of strain.
His articulation, though not as accurate as modern-day interpreters, is nevertheless
good, and elegantly executed. His diction is clean and unaffected except for
inflections appropriate to the context. In a few words, this is bel canto
singing. Indeed, a measure of his ability and success as a bel canto performer
was such that he spanned two generations of the revival: beginning in the early
`50s he was a frequent partner of Callas, while by the `70s, he was appearing
alongside Caballé.
His is all the more remarkable given that
his repertoire was centred not with Bellini or Donizetti, but rather upon the
heavier works of High and Late Romanticism—Verdi and Puccini. While remembered
fondly for Arturo, it was Mario Cavaradossi which was usually considered his
signature role. Thus: Recondita armonia,
1965, at Geneva.
The same qualities are once again
demonstrated: beautiful tone with a healthy bloom, clear and unaffected
diction, perfectly moderated breath control and extreme technical mastery. Note
not only the magnificent high B-flat sustained effortlessly, but also his
adroit handling of the music afterwards, particularly the tricky passage “sei
tu,” which has a habit of choking many tenors. In the video, we can also note
his stage deportment; Raimondi stands upright, with noble posture and without
undue extraneous movements, more a knight that a lover, without the same
romantic qualities, as, for example, Franco Corelli, a formidable competitor!
In 1961, when the Night of the Seven Stars (Les
Huguenots) returned to La Scala, led by Joan Sutherland as the Queen and
having in Giulietta Simionato a genuine soprano-falcon,
Raimondi was a natural choice for Raul; who better to traverse such a long,
long role laden with a high tessitura and numerous florid passages? Elements
conspired to suggest Franco Corelli, who got the role and led Gli Ugonotti to tremendous success. This
is not at all about slighting Corelli’s talent and masterful performance;
simply, it regards the fact that there can be only one Raul, and the casting of
Corelli prevented Raimondi from performing it. There is a balance to
everything: in hearing Corelli’s stupendous performance, audiences were denied
the opportunity to hear Raimondi.
Nevertheless, some suggest that Raimondi
got his own back four years later, when he assumed the role of Arnoldo in Guglielmo Tell, which Corelli had
planned to perform but found to be too high and uncomfortable. Raimondi, once
again partnered with Gencer, performed the role at Teatro di San Carlo in 1965,
and then repeated the following year in 1966, at the Teatro Còlon, from which
this recording comes.
Ultimately, despite the ease with which he
sings the formidable romanza O muto asil
del pianto—brilliant, squillo-drenched high notes and perfect stability,
and the passionate audience response, Raimondi untimely found Arnoldo too
taxing to keep in his active repertoire.
Throughout his career, Raimondi was
conservative with regards to the roles he performed. This is not to suggest his
repertoire was small and light: in his vocal maturity, begining around 1970, he
sang many heavy and demanding roles: Arrigo, Pollione, Riccardo, Rodolfo (Luisa
Miller), and Enzo Grimaldo among them.
Nevertheless, he had an acute sense of what was right for his voice, and he consistently
refused the persistent offers of many opera houses to sing Manrico and Alvaro.
He also displayed an affinity for early Verdi, starring in an acclaimed
production of I Masnadieri, with Ilva
Ligabue and Boris Christoff, at the Teatro dell’ Opera di Roma in 1972, all the
while maintaining his most cherished roles of il Duca, Pinkerton, Cavaradossi
and Alfredo.
It is with Pinkerton I would like to leave you:
the love duet of the first act, captured live with Renata Tebaldi in 1958.
Despite the power and size of Tebaldi’s voice, Raimondi is never less than
audible, never abandoning his refined phrasing and immaculate vocalism to
strain for volume as others sometimes do. I would like to further point out
this performance occurred in August, at the Arena Flegrea. That is, during very
hot weather in a very large outdoor venue!
The performance is of course, as the
fashion in those times, capped with a clarion high C!
This, then, is Gianni Raimondi: titan of
the old lirica italiana. Though he
did sing to great acclaim at the Metropolitan Opera in 1965 with Mirella Freni
in La Bohème, and of course toured in
South America and other European countries such as Germany, he nevertheless spent
the majority of his career in Italy, in the Italian way. A few performances of Faust were his only excursions beyond
Italian music. A sharp encounter with Hebert von Karajan which led the gracious
Raimondi to simply describe him as una
brutta persona speaks volumes of his character and person. No endless rants
and public disgrace; merely a succinct comment on the abysmal way von Karajan
could sometimes treat singers that disagreed with him. Raimondi’s near analogue
of a tenor, Alfredo Kraus, had similar experiences with the great German
conductor, and indeed many parallels can be drawn between the two: both were
considered to have the best technique of tenors of their generation, and both
demonstrated an unwavering commitment to performance at consistently high
standards, night after night, live in the opera house.
Like Kraus, another aristocrat of the lirica without pretension or falseness,
Raimondi simply performed as the best version of himself, a shining model to
his adoring public and other singers, and one that I feel is particularly
relevant to the circumstances of today.
