Puccini N

Manon Lescaut
Henk Lauwers Innkeeper; Sergeant; Captain ; Ludwig Van Gijsegem Dancing Master; Lamplighter ; Miriam Gauci sop Manon Lescaut ; Lucienne Van Deyck mez Singer ; Kaludi Kaludov ten Des Grieux ; Donald George ten Edmondo ; Vicente Sardinero bar Lescaut ; Marcel Rosca bass Geronte

Brussels Belgian Radio & TV Philharmonic Chorus; Brussels Belgian Radio & TV Philharmonic Orchestra; (Jack) Gregoor Choir/Alexander Rahbari

Naxos     8 660019/20 (126 minutes : DDD)

Notes and text included
Reviewed: Gramophone (12/1992)
 
In the lovely, springlike opening of this opera, student Edmondo offers to improvise what he calls a madrigal. Its theme is youth (""Giovinezza e il vostro nome""), and it is taken up by the ""laughing young ones, full of love"", ""ridente, amorose adolescenti"". One of the attractions of this new recording is its youthfulness. Both Manon and Des Grieux, their voices a shade lighter and a degree more slender than usual, sound young, and there is a happy contrast with the brother (old, at any rate, in the ways of the world) and with the Geronte, whose voice sounds appropriate to the age which his name proclaims. So, throughout its enchanting First Act and in various of the later episodes, the opera is closer than usual to the comic genre, of a trick to catch the old one and of youth triumphant. When it turns to tragedy the effect is all the more grievous, and the final scene, sung by these young voices, has a heightened poignancy as it brings to such a despairing conclusion the story which had opened so gaily with the student's song of youth and hope.
Miriam Gauci, herself still a young hopeful in the world of international opera, has many delightful qualities, notably the gift of a pure, unthickened lyric soprano voice, and the taste to use it well. She sings with feeling though without intensity, and certainly without the deeper, tragedy-laden tones generally associated with the ill-fated heroines of this later school of Italian opera. Both vocally and dramatically she is better suited to Puccini's Manon than to his Butterfly, of which she nevertheless gave a sympathetic account in her recent recording, also on Naxos (5/92). Kaludi Kaludov makes an admirable Des Grieux. The Italian language suits him, and he here presents a vocal character very different from that of his Vladimir in the Sofia Prince Igor under Tchakarov (Sony, 6/90). The light, graceful style wanted for his first song eludes him as it does almost all (we really want to hear a Tito Schipa in it), but ""Donna non vidi mai"" goes well, and in all three duets with Manon he has the authentic ring in his voice and a conviction which needs no hysterical outbursts to fortify it. There is something missing both in himself and Gauci: it may be what Italians mean when they talk (approvingly) of morbidezza, or what to us is a kind of 'sickness' in the voice, a feeling which must colour solos such as Des Grieux's ""Ah, Manon, mi tradisce il tuo folle pensiero"" and ""Guardate, pazzo son"". Even so, this is a genuinely moving performance, and many more opulent, overtly tragic versions of the final scene can induce less emotional involvement in the listener than does this one.
The remainder of the cast do well, with Vicente Sardinero as a lively, somewhat rough-voiced Lescaut, Marcel Rosca characterizing vividly as Geronte and the smaller parts all capably sung (though of course there are no star-turns, as in the Sinopoli/DG recording which has Fassbaender as soloist in the Pastoral of Act 2, or the Callas/Serafin/EMI which has Cossotto in the same tiny role). Rahbari's conducting has the zest and warmth of lyricism that are so essential, and he brings out more of the score's delicacy than many others do. A greater clarity of highlighted detail will be found in the Chailly/Decca and Sinopoli recordings, and they do not suffer from such backward-placing of the chorus as, in this new version, makes nonsense of Edmondo, at the start, singing to and among the crowd. Still, for the super-budget price asked for this we perhaps cannot hope for everything, and for that matter it is usually no use hoping for everything in a full-price issue either."