Beethoven: Opus III. - pianist Paul Badura-Skoda - sound recording reviews

MUCH nonsense has been written about Giuseppe Verdi, right down to the critic Edward Dent, who could leek down his nose in the 1920s and write about "barrel-organ tunes that excited our ancestors to laughter or disgust." He was referring to Rigoletto and La Traviata, and presumably to Nabucco, which contributed mightily to driving foreign rulers off Italian soil. Verdi himself, who could inveigh strongly against sopranos, tenors, and managers, remained calm over this kind of criticism, collecting his royalties and saying, "I'll tempo decidera." Dent must have had one of the barrel-organ monkeys sitting on his head when he dismissed La Traviata, an opera in the great Italian style that stemmed from Monteverdi.

Verdi was criticized by some for the great outpouring of melody in his operas and for his "failure" to balance orchestra against voices. It is true that for the most part the orchestra is secondary to the singers and the arias in his early works. But that presumably was what opera was about until Wagner, to the delight of the German burghers, reversed the process. How audiences today respond to La Traviata can be measured by the performance recording of the Chorus and Orchestra of La Scala, conducted by Riccardo Muti (Sony S2K 52 486). If any in the audience were sleeping off dinner, they must undoubtedly have been awakened by the rousing applause. For here all that is appealing in Verdi has been wrapped together masterfully, and though Tiziana Fabbricini and Roberte Alagna are no Ronata Tebaldi or Ferruccio Tagliavini, they are strong enough to carry it off.

With maturity, Verdi's orchestral palette became richer and the interpretive demands on singers and conductors greater. When his Don Carlo failed in Paris but was a success in London, he would say that rhythm was the core of that opera--"but rhythm is a dead letter for the performers at the [Paris] Opera." But his greater reliance on the orchestra, perhaps as his lyricism waned, brought charges that he had succumbed te Wagner's influence. In fact, Don Carlo was moving in the direction of the textured Otello, Verdi's greatest and most balanced work. We have Don Carlo now, too, in the version of James Lovine, perhaps the leading operatic conductor today, and the Metropolitan Opera, featuring Michael Sylvester and Aprile Millo (Sony S3K 52 500). Lovine is well aware that, to Verdi, opera was not a vehicle for the diva, but the diva a vehicle for the score. And listening, you never have to ask, "Did the tenor have heartburn?"

* It is not as great a leap as you might think from Verdi to Noel Coward, for both dealt with the culture at hand. For Coward, that culture was the music hall, the vapors of the international set, and the flighty sophistication of the London stage. He was active in every phase of what we today call "show business," though his one really good film, The Scoundrel, is totally forgotten. Just what Noel Coward contributed is packed together in four CDs of his entire output for the British label HMV. "Mad Dogs and Englishmen," "Mrs. Worthington," the brittle and rococo scenes with Gertrnde Lawrence from Private Lives, and the many songs he seemed to write almost ad libiturn--they are all here in this wonderful collection. Missing is Coward's clever and still topical rewrite of Cole Porters lyrics for "Let's Do It." The Master's Voice: Noel Coward, 1928-1953 (Angel/ EMI 54919 20) is not only a tribute to a great talent but a slice of an era.

Noel Coward represented the apotheosis of a time and an attitude. The American musical comedy, which grew out of the operetta, Tin Pan Alley, and the New York Geist, developed its voice and beat in the period after 1920. It was robust, original, tuneful, and irreverent, until it began to take itself too seriously--admitting Loonard Bernstein, yet. The catalogue of its successes and its impact is long. Run through the music and the lyrics of the Gershwins, of Rodgers & Hart, of Harold Arlen, and of Cole Porter, and you will find much of urban America in a native musical form.

The record companies are now systematically reissuing the great old musicals--or at least those that were fortunate enough to be inscribed in original-cast recordings. I have mentioned some of these, but I add to the list the Vivien Leigh/Jean Pierre Aumont Tovarich (Angel ZDM 6489322) and Cabin in the Sky with the 1963 revival cast (Angel ZDM 6489223). Tovarich produced no great or lasting songs but rejoiced in a lively book. Cabin had a first-rate score by Vernon Duke (a/k/a Vladimir Dukelsky in his mode as a "serious" composer), with lyrics by John LaTouche. It included "Taking a Chance on Love" and "Honey in the Honeycomb"--songs that have gone into the category of standards. In this revival of the all-black musical the cast gives a rousing performance.

* Jussi Bjorling's album Opera Arias and So,gs, Vol. H (EMI Classics 6407), brings back one of the great voices of an era whose standards were far higher than those that obtain today in the important opera houses. He was also a musician, in striking contrast to the bellowing Pavarotti. Many years ago, I encouraged battle among my friends by playing the Ingemisco from the Verdi Requiem in competing versions by Bjorling and Beniamino Gigli--the one singing with classical purity and constraint and the other with the throbs and vibratos characteristic of Italian operatic voices. We never agreed where the greater virtue lay. In this collection you will find the Ingernisco along with operatic standards culled from Verdi, Mascagni, Bizet, Gounod, etc., and perhaps agree that Jussi Bjorling could let the notes convey emotion without editorial comment.