Rossini, Il mio primo amore

I was nearly seventeen when I began listening to opera and enjoying it. As fate decreed, it was at the public library in downtown Marietta, Georgia, in the Audio & Visual department, that I stumbled on Alceo Galliera's 1957 recording of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia. To this day I can close my eyes and see my hand reaching for the disc, which was covered in a plastic wrap, and looking at the cover art. Leontyne Price once remarked that Maria Callas gave her the “opera bug.” The same is true for me. The recording left me with the lasting impression that music could actually make me happy. Despite producer Walter Legge's idiosyncratic cuts and casting, Galliera’s recording remains indispensable for its subtle, insightful humor— and worth writing about now, after more than six decades.

For better or worse, Callas is the major attraction to the set, as she is on countless other mediocre recordings. It is mentioned frequently that her best roles were Violetta, Norma, Anna Bolena, and Lady Macbeth, followed then by Lucia, Medea, and Amina, et al., according to one's own taste. I tend to agree. Apparently she made a mess of Rosina onstage, in a run-of-the-mill La Scala revival that did not have a Visconti or Zeffirelli to nurture her performance or comic skills. In his brilliant biography Maria Meneghini Callas, Michael Scott suggests that the diva had no sense of humor at all, which may or may not be true. But even Mr. Scott would admit that many people fail to understand why Rosina or the entire opera is precisely funny in the first place. Situations are funny, not a performer's act of "being funny.” Rather than falling into the trap of giving us cloying, cutesy, demonstrative two-dimensionality, Callas gives us a journey with an arch. In the first act, her "Ecco qua! Sempre un'istoria" is genuinely sorrowful, and her "Ah, qual colpo inaspettato" is, as the words describe, delirious with nervous happiness. I must clarify that it is the specificity with which she approaches these general emotions (sadness, elation, apprehension) that makes her a great actress. Lots of silly people think they need more video footage to see what her acting must have been like. Just listen! Specificity, timing, musicality, sense of self within the text—that's what acting is, and the proof is in the records. Some will dismiss this recording, however, based on Callas's rapid vocal decline. It may be true that her voice was not as impressive in 1957 as it was in 1954 for her Coloratura Lyric session with Serafin, featuring an inspired "Una voce poco fa.” Even so, 1957 was not a bad year for Callas. She sang magnificently in revivals of Anna Bolena at La Scala and La Sonnambula at Cologne and Edinburgh. As with her Amina, she gives Rosina three dimensions.

Callas is joined by the young Luigi Alva and fellow thespian Tito Gobbi—still one of the most insightful Barber trios. Alva sounded incredibly charming and sexy (despite nasality) in juvenile roles, most notably Fenton in Falstaff. He was also the Almaviva of his generation (even if he never sang "Cessa di più resistere"). Later on, he began playing the idea of the Rossini style rather than playing it with conviction. He also employed a type of breathy, staccato singing in lieu of cleaner, simpler legato lines, in essence wasting a lot of time tweaking a portrayal that, in 1957, had all the wit and impetuousness Almaviva requires. 

Tito Gobbi is, as always, terrific; no one portrays Figaro's propensity for mischief and adventure better than he. A singer-actor who found lightness in every character, he negotiated the rough terrain between tragedy and comedy with ease. In doing so, he made those around him—including the humorless Callas(?)—even better. A delightful example of this is the duet "Dunque io son," which is an all-time favorite of mine: it is heartwarming, funny, and gorgeous to listen to all at once. Perhaps Gobbi should be remembered as an actor-singer instead of the other way around; it is for this reason that his Figaro and his Rigoletto, in particular, are so completely absorbing. One might argue that he and Callas represent the last of the "singing actors" à la Chaliapin. These artists lived and worked during a time when good singing and good acting weren't separate ideas, but were intertwined. To say a singer acts with "feeling" or "emotion" probably means they perform with spontaneity, thus communicating the real joy of the drama in the music. All the same, neither Gobbi nor Callas was ever noted for purity or mellifluousness; their power of the will far exceeded the power of the voice. 

Subsequent recordings such as the 1964 Varviso and the 1993 López-Cobos boast stronger casts overall—Ugo Benelli’s performance in the former is a revelation— but Legge's crew offer more than a few surprises. Zaccaria's Basilio holds its own among a small and exceptional group of peers; Ollendorf's Bartolo, though a tad crass and "Teutonic," is occasionally very funny and even a little sardonic (I happen to love his "Che noia!" in the "Pace e gioia" scene). The rest of the cast is fine. Galliera is a terribly obscure figure but his conducting of the Philharmonia is brilliantly exciting and never ever forced. 

One mustn't neglect other Rossini -- L'italiana, La Cenerentola, Armida and Semiramide, to name a few—but Il barbiere is a gem, a marvel, a bright, sunny Spanish afternoon.