Word: bergonzi
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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VERDI: DON CARLO (London; 4 LPs). The usual cuts have been restored and all five acts are here, sung by an assemblage of stars: Renata Tebaldi, Carlo Bergonzi, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Nicolai Ghiaurov and Grace Bumbry. Their voices often outshine their characterizations (though Bumbry is good as Eboli and Ghiaurov as Philip), and the solos are stronger than the ensembles. Conductor Georg Solti generally keeps rein on the sprawling tragedy, which unfolds with dark grandeur and erupts with fiery excitement in the auto da fe in the great Spanish square...
VERDI: REQUIEM (RCA Victor). The virtues of this new recording are the soloists. Carlo Bergonzi is good enough to make the listener forget Jussi Bjoerling's masterly reading of the Ingemisco. Birgit Nilsson is all fire; Lili Chookasian and Ezio Flagello both have big, warm voices. The difficulties stem from Erich Leins-dorf's conducting of the Boston Symphony. The pace is much too slow. The long, dramatic Otello-like lines enshroud the listener rather than move him. Tullio Serafin's interpretation of the Requiem (Angel) is still the best...
...Miss Caldwell's production was Mexican operetta star Placido Domingo, who sang the title role of Ginastera's Don Rodrigo with the New York City Opera this season. As Hippolyte, his lyric tenor projected warmly and well controlled, with little hollowness or break between registers. Unfortunately, he is no Bergonzi; Domingo's sound is marked by continual tightness and lack of real ring. Perhaps his singing on unfamiliar French vowels was part of the problem. His acting usually remained typically tenoristic; that is, non-existent. But Domingo's forthcoming reappearance (opposite Renata Tebaldi in the new Boheme) should provide...
...fine Italian hand had done to the recent Broadway flop, The Lady of the Camellias, he went into positive paroxysms of production. And when the curtain rose on each new scene of his masterpiece, the astonished audience forgot the forlorn presence of Soprano Leontyne Price and Tenor Carlo Bergonzi to shout "Stupendo! Bravo, Franco...
...idiom perfectly. "Aïda all' Americana" (Aïda American style), said La Notte, "everything bigger and better than anybody else's." Only the singers noticed that the reviews barely mentioned them at all. "I looked like my grandmother in that ancient costume," said Tenor Bergonzi, "but I don't mind if the directors get the glory today. Opera cannot go on without singers, but it can manage quite well without directors...