LA FANCIULLA DEL WEST
Renata Tebaldi, Mario del Monaco
Cornell MacNeil, Giorgio Tozzi
Orchestra e coro dell'Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Roma
dir : Franco Capuana
Original stereo recording: Rome 1958Decca Analog Golden Age Volume One Blu-Ray audio [P] 2016
High resolution audio files (24 bit/192 kHz) prepared from the original master tapes at Abbey Road StudiosDigital remaster at Universal Music Mexico
FLAC files, scans, no libretto
A review from Gramophone, January 1989Recorded in 1958, this vintage Decca issue brings an astonishing example of early stereo engineering...
Capuana directs an expansive performance, but you have only to hear the haunting song of the roving minstrel, Jake Wallace, right at the start, "Che farrano i vecchi miei", as sung here by Giorgio Tozzi, to realize the unique atmospheric beauty of this version, with the off-stage voice as precisely placed as those on-stage. I remember an American critic comparing the sound of the Gramophone Award-winning DG version conducted by Zubin Mehta unfavourably with this, and he was right. Forceful as the Mehta performance is, the subtleties of the score are brought out even more by Capuana's reading, at once more spacious and more delicate.
The Decca producer and engineers appreciated ahead of their time what extra dimensions stereo could provide, and the final scene also remains a model of recording production. After Dick Johnson has sung his aria "Ch'ella mi creda", (del Monaco lusty but not coarse), Minnie's arrival, Brunnhilde-like, on her horse, outdoes any stage production I have ever seen, and the final farewells, in which the miners sing "Che farrano i vecchi miei" in alternate phrases with Minnie's and Dick's love song, is timed more lovingly than I have ever known it otherwise.
Tebaldi is in superb voice, hitting her top notes with pinging precision, Del Monaco with his rich tone was never finer, and Cornell Macneil gives Jack Rance an apt element of nobility, making him more than a Wild West Scarpia.
EG