The Royal Opera: GREAT PERFORMANCES Recorded live at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden 1955-1997/Opus Arte/32 CDs
After World War 2, the arts organizations of Europe were in a pretty dire state. Funding had all but dried up during the war and buildings and artists were in short supply owing to most singers and musicians being drafted into the forces for the duration. Some never returned and many of the great opera houses and concert halls had been destroyed by bombing.
In London, the determination to regrow the arts was spearheaded by the Clement Atlee government of 1945-50 and one of the first moves was to convert the Royal Opera House back from being a dancehall into a major theatre once again and form a full-time company with the best of the new generation of performers. Our generation of music students was privileged to have been taught by many of these pioneering performers including our publisher and myself who both studied with leading musicians and singers who were prominent in the rebuilding of the Royal Opera House and told us many tales of the great and terrifying who passed before them in the orchestra pit or opera stage.
This collection of BBC radio recordings of the finest productions on offer from Covent Garden gives us a glimpse of the richness that was created during the fifties through to the nineties and includes twelve of the very best cast lists you will ever hear on a live stage anywhere in the world.
The early productions are recorded in mono and sometimes the sound can be a little opaque but the singing is never less than heroic starting with Otello (Verdi 1887) conducted by Rafael Kubelik and starring Ramon Vinay, Gre Brouwenstijn supported by Otakar Kraus and John Lanigan in 1955. We are immediately aware of the presence of something exciting as is the Tosca (Puccini 1900) sung by Zinka Milanov and Franco Corelli in 1957.
Victoria de los Angeles sings a fine Madama Butterfly (Puccini 1904) partnered by John Lanigan and Geraint Evans in a 1957 production conducted by Rudolf Kempe in a production by Robert Helpmann.
In 1958 one of the most legendary casts ever assembled in London was directed by Luchino Visconti and conducted by Carlo Maria Guilini in Verdi’s Don Carlos (1867) with Jon Vickers, Tito Gobbi, Boris Christoff, Michael Langdon and Gre Brouwenstijn. The cast also includes my teacher the tenor Edgar Evans who was a full-time company member. He told me that going from the Welsh valleys to appearing with the greatest legends of the Verdi stage was a thrill and he never tired of reliving it! Visconti also designed the costumes and I can vouch for the quality of the production as I was privileged to see the last revival of this production at the Opera House in 1983 conducted by Bernard Haitink and the spectacle of the sets remains vivid in my mind.
The singing is miraculous in places and worth the price of the box alone if you are a Verdi aficionado despite some limitations in the sound and some clomping around the stage in a few places, but the sound has been remastered.
It would be difficult to top that production but it continues to be amazing as next up we have Joan Sutherland singing Lucia Di Lammermoor (Donizetti 1835) with Tulio Serafin in the 1959 production by Franco Zeffirelli. Sutherland needs no introduction to opera goers and her singing is fresh and youthful and captured in a historic performance to compare with her commercial recording ten years later.
In 1962 Georg Solti conducted Don Giovanni (Mozart 1787) with Cesare Sieppi, Geraint Evans, Richard Lewis, Sena Jurinac and Mirella Freni in a dynamic and very fiery Don as you would expect from Solti, nicknamed the “screaming skull” by the orchestra!
Another 1962 production Un Ballo In Maschera (Verdi 1859) presents us with Jon Vickers singing the lead Gustavo with Ettore Bastianni and Regina Resnik in another strong cast which introduces us to the soprano Amy Shuard who was to go on to become one of the Garden’s most accomplished singers throughout the ‘60s and early ‘70s until her early death in 1975.
As a dramatic soprano, she is heard again in the 1971 production of Parsifal (Wagner 1882) conducted by Reginald Goodall and produced by Ande Anderson. The strong cast includes Norman Bailey, Donald McIntyre and Michael Langdon together with another teacher and colleague of mine, Dennis Wicks. This is consistent with Goodall’s approach to his Ring cycle, but the power of his delivery and the strength of the singing team he is given make this another production worth having in your collection at any price. The sound is also in stereo and ushers in the later productions all recorded by BBC Radio 3 in stereo.
Così fan tutte (Mozart 1790) with Stuart Burrows and Thomas Allan together with Kiri Te Kanata and Handel’s Alceste (Handel 1750) conducted by Colin Davis and Charles Mackerras offer us sparkling singing from 1981 and again I can vouch for the quality of these productions having seen them live at the time.
I think Mackerras was a very underrated conductor during his lifetime, particularly in the opera house and I’m glad that his star is rising higher and higher these days as people discover his qualities. Alceste is sung by Janet Baker with John Shirley Quirk and Robert Tear and this brings us to Der Rosenkavalier (Strauss 1911) conducted by Andrew Davis and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Wagner 1868) conducted by Bernard Haitink complete the box set from 1995 and 1997 respectively.
Both productions have starry casts with Ann Murray and Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Kurt Moll and John Dobson doing the honours in Rosenkavalier and John Tomlinson, Tom Allen, Gosta Winbergh as Walther and Tomlinson as Sachs together with Nancy Gustafson as Eva in Die Meistersinger.
This box of 32 CDs covers some superb productions and if you prefer your opera live from the stage then these performances are a must-have. The sound quality gets better from the stereo broadcasts but the mono sound is quite acceptable given the quality of the voices and orchestral playing that is on offer.
It's available in shops and online and well worth exploring.
Release Date: 1st Sep 2014
Catalogue No: OACD9024D
Label: Opus Arte
Series: Royal Opera House Collection
