1982 The Art of Nicolai Gedda Vinyl 3-LP Record & Booklet Box Set VG+

$

28

1982 The Art of Nicolai Gedda Vinyl 3-LP Record & Booklet Box Set VG+
Record Grade per Goldmine Standard: VG+
It is not always appreciated that luck and coincidence can play almost as great a part in the career of a singer as they do in the lives of those who haunt the casino and the race course. In the case of Nicolai Gedda, for instance, chance was largely responsible for Sweden's losing a potential bank manager and gaining one of the greatest tenors of the century. Looking back it might seem that he was destined to become an international singer, yet things could easily have turned out very differently. Gedda, who was born in Stockholm on 11 July 1925, certainly grew up in a musical home. His father, Russian- born Mikhail Ustinov, took the family in 1928 to Leipzig, where he served as choirmaster of the Russian Orthodox Church for six years, and it was there that the young Nicolai learnt to read music and sing as a member of a children’s quartet. Interestingly too, and of the utmost value to him in his eventual career, he became fluent in five languages, speaking Swedish and Russian at home with his parents, falling naturally into German because of living in Leipzig, and learning English and French at school. When the family returned to Stockholm he continued to sing in church as a boy soprano, but there inevitably came the day when his voice broke. ‘I woke up one morning,' he recalls, ‘and found that I could only make croaking sounds, and for two whole years I stopped singing altogether. Then I tried singing in the bath one day and discovered that I had developed a light, rather high tenor.’ Even though he had perfect pitch and loved music, he did not think of taking up a singing career when he discovered his new voice. He remembers that he once sang a solo, Cesar Franck’s ‘Panis angelicus’, at a cathedral service in a garrison town during his military service, but any idea of entering the limelight of the opera house was more of a fantasy than an ambition. After finishing at high school he went to work at the Scandinavian Bank in Stockholm, first as a teller and then in the loans department. One imagines he would be popular with the bank’s customers, for even when turning down an application for a loan he would no doubt have done so in honeyed tones and with a soothingly turned phrase. Two or three years went by in this way until he spoke about singing one day to a player in the Royal Opera orchestra who was a customer of the bank. He was given positive advice: ‘Call on Carl Oehmann and let him hear your voice. He is the best teacher in Sweden.’ Gedda took the advice, and never a man to shirk a challenge or do anything by halves, he sang that most taxing of bel canto arias, ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ from L’elisir d’amore. Oehmann, declaring that he had never heard the aria more beautifully sung except by Jussi Bjorling, accepted him as a pupil for a few months in 1949 and secured him an audition for a musical scholarship. Success at this audition won Gedda two years’ study at the Royal Conservatory in Stockholm, where musical training was supplemented by ballet exercises to help in smooth movement on the operatic stage. His chance came in 1952, when two of his teachers, who were also the producer and conductor at the Royal Opera, decided he was ideally suited to the role of Chappelou, the tenor lead in Adam’s Le Postilion de Longjumeau. After two months’ preparation Nicolai Gedda made his debut on 8th April and was an overnight success. (It was at this time that he adopted his mother’s maiden name for professional purposes.) Again luck was to play an important part in his career, for the news of the brilliant new tenor who had taken Stockholm by storm reached the planners of the EMI recording of Boris Godunov starring Boris Christoff. Within two months of his stage debut the young Gedda was recording his first role, Dimitri, and before the year was out he had also recorded the Bach B minor Mass under Herbert von Karajan. His immediate rise to international status was confirmed by his debut at La Scala, Milan, as Ottavio in Don Giovanni, again under Karajan, the following January, just nine months after his first stage appearance and while he was still, strictly speaking, a student of the Stockholm opera school. There was in fact some bitterness of feeling in his native city when its new star was invited to stay on in Milan to create the role of the Bridegroom in the Scala premiere of Carl Orff's II Trionfo dell’ Afrodite, but after a flurry of telegrams between the two cities matters were settled in an amicable way so that Gedda could continue with his international engagements. Indeed, he did not return to sing in Stockholm until the autumn of 1956, though he made up for this neglect by performing leading roles there is no less than five operas—La traviata, Rigoletto, Don Giovanni, Die Entfiihrung aus dem Serail and Idomeneo—all of them calling for that touch of class for which his singing has always been noted. Fortune certainly smiled on him from the beginning, his successes at La Scala leading to debuts all over the world that were applauded with the same warmth, at Covent Garden and the Paris Opera in 1954, at Salzburg and the New York Metropolitan three years later. From then onwards his progress was rapid and certain, and it says a great deal for his intelligence and dedication that he was able to take such instant and overwhelming success in his stride. Lady Luck had led him to his invaluable first teacher, to his Stockholm debut and his first recording, but from that point everything was up to him. He was not able, like most other young singers, to try out new roles in minor houses where any failure would be of only local concern: each Gedda ‘first’ took place in the international spotlight, in which no allowance would be made for mistakes. Fortunately his early lessons from his father and his subsequent studies at the conservatory had given him a secure base both technically and stylistically, and he had always known the kind of singing he wanted to produce. His first idol had been Richard Tauber, which no doubt accounts for his own liking for operetta, then subsequently he heard Beniamino Gigli and Tito Schipa and decided he would always try to achieve their lyrical grace and delicacy. He was therefore fully prepared for the string of challenges that lay ahead, and conductors, producers and managements were soon to realise they were dealing with an artist who was extremely intelligent as well as highly musical. The fact that Gedda has always controlled his career, never allowing himself to engage in roles beyond his vocal range, does not mean that his repertoire has been unduly restricted. On the contrary, he has enjoyed an unusually wide variety of roles in a remarkable range of styles. His lyric tenor is naturally high, yet it is also a voice with plenty of colour and body so that he can sing a relatively heavy role such as Don Jose in Carmen, which he has recorded complete with both Victoria de los Angeles and Maria Callas, the two most famous Carmens on disc, as comfortably as the more delicate Des Grieux in Manon and Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore. He has even made one foray into Wagner, singing Lohengrin in Stockholm in 1966. Although he felt the performance went quite well, he noticed that his voice lost some of its flexibility a short time afterwards and he needed to work it back into its usual fine condition. He was tempted by an offer from the Wagner brothers a few years later to sing the role at Bayreuth, but in addition to finding the performance dates too close together he remembered the trouble it had caused him before, so he reluctantly turned their offer down. His favourite composers, Mozart, Donizetti, Puccini, Bizet, Massenet and, for songs, Schubert, offer him a considerable repertoire, and he also has a number of roles from other composers which he finds especially rewarding—Alfredo and the Duke, two of the most attractive lyrical roles in Verdi, Lensky in Eugen Onegin and Benvenuto Cellini in the opera by Berlioz. He is keenly interested in the acting as well as the singing of all his roles and gives a great deal of thought to the characters. In the case of Cellini, for instance, he read several books about the famous goldsmith as well as his memoirs before learning any of the music. Lensky is a part which he finds fascinating, and not just for the expressive aria before the duel. ‘The role is not very long,’ he admits, ‘but it is very beautiful. Lensky’s destiny is the same as that of Pushkin himself, who insulted a man who had been flirting with his wife and challenged him to a duel. Duels were frequent at that time, young men dying in them for no serious reason. It became a fashion at the time to have duels when disappointed in love, just as an earlier generation had followed the example of Goethe's Werther and commited suicide. I think Lensky is predestined to die in this way, perhaps even wanted to do so. Though the role is short, it has great contrasts— youthful love in the beginning, the incredible change of mood in the party scene, which leads him to make this big confrontation over practically nothing, and finally his typical Slav resignation. Being half-Russian and half-Swedish, I find these depressions and this sadness very close to me, so Lensky has always been a favourite role.’ Sometimes Gedda finds that his view of a role changes over the years. When he first sang Alfredo in La traviata, for example, he gave the character a lot of innocence, which in retrospect he thinks was wrong. ‘Any young man moving in that sort of Paris society,’ he realised later, ‘was bound to be sophisticated. He needs to be sung with freshness in the voice, but that is a totally different quality.’ With his interest in the theatrical aspect of opera, he is naturally keen that everything is right about any production in which he is appearing. He has praise for Visconti and Zeffirelli as directors with knowledge and understanding of opera, but he can be scathing about others who have been brought in from the theatre and the cinema and have shown no such virtues, among them his former idols Jean-Louis Barrault and Rene Clair. During a recording career begun in 1952 Gedda has committed to disc so many complete operas and operettas that he has simply lost count. He has invariably been in good company here, numbering Callas, de los Angeles and Schwarzkopf among his leading ladies, and he has recorded several works twice, notably Die Fledermaus, The Gypsy Baron and The Merry Widow. He has in fact been instrumental in establishing a respectable position for operetta on the gramophone, for he brings to all these light- hearted pieces the same superlative sense of style, affection and fastidious care that he has lavished on such classic recordings as Karajan’s early Bach B minor Mass and the RECORD I Side One (23:33) band 1. Auber: Du pauvre seui (La Muette de Portici, Act 4) mono (4:27) band 2. Adam: Mes amis, ecoutez I’histoire (Le Postilion de Longjumeau, Act 1) (3:48) band 3. Rossini: Asil hereditaire (Guillaume Tell, Act 4) (3:42) band 4. Berlioz: La gloire etait ma seuie idole (Benvenuto Cellini, Act 3) (3:54) band 5. Berlioz: Sur les monts les plus sauvages (Benvenuto Cellini, Act 2) (4:04) band 6. Thomas: Elie ne croyait pas (Mignon, Act 3) (3:34) Side Two (19:40) band 1. Gounod: Mon coeur est piein . . . Anges du Paradis (Mireille, Act 5) (3:35) band 2. Massenet: Instant charmant . . . En fermant les yeux (Mc.non, Act 2) (2:59) band 3, Masseiet: Je sui? seul ... Ah fuyez, douce image (Manon, Act 3) (4:18) band 4. Massenet: Un autre est son epoux! . . . J’aurais sur ma poitrine ( Werther, Act 2) (2:54) band 5. Massenet: Pourquoi me reveiller? ( Werther, Act 3) (2:35) band 6. Lalo: Puisqu’on ne peut. . . Vainement, ma bien aimee (Aubade) (Le Roi d’Ys, Act 3) (3:19) RECORD II Side Three (2TA6) band 1. Mozart: In Mohrenland (Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, Act 3) mono (2:20) band 2. Mozart: Un’aura amorosa (Cost fan tutte, Act 1) mono (5:06) band 3. Mozart: Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schbn (Die Zauberflote, Act 1) (4:00) band 4. Weber: Von Jugend auf schon im Kampgefild’ (Oberon, Act 2) (6:57) band 5. Goldmark: Magische Tone (Die Konigin von Saba, Act 2) (3:45) band 6. Wagner: Mein lieber Schwan! (Lohengrin, Act 3) (5:08) Side Four (28:32) band 1. Donizetti: Una furtiva lagrima (L’elisir d’amore, Act 2) (4:49) band 2. Donizetti: Povero Ernesto . . . Cercherd lontana terra (Don Pasquale, Act 2) (4:33) band 3. Verdi: Forse la soglia attinse . . . Ma se m’e forza (Un ballo in maschera, Act 3) (5:28) band 4. Ponchielli: Cielo e mar! (La Gioconda, Act 2) (4:42) band 5. Puccini: Che gelida manina (La Boheme, Act 1) (4:34) band 6. Cilea: E la solita storia del pastor (L’Arlesiana, Act 2) mono (4:26) RECORD III Side Five band 1. Veracini: Meco verrai (Rosalinda) (2:26) band 2. Respighi: Notte (4:18) band 3. Carnevali: Stornelli capricciosi (2:29) band 4. Richard Strauss: Heimliche Aufforderung, Op. 27 No. 3 (3:23) band 5. Richard Strauss: Die Nacht, Op. 10 No. 3 (2:32) band 6. Richard Strauss: Befreit, Op. 39 No. 4 (5:18) band 7. Richard Strauss: Liebeshymnus, Op. 32 No. 3 (1:54) band 8. Johann Strauss II: Als flotter Geist (Der Zigeunerbaron, Act 1) mono (2:38) band 9. Lehar: Ich trete ins Zimmer... Immer nur lacheln (Das Land des Lachelns, Act 1) mono (4:31) Side Six band 1. Glinka: Brother, in the darkness (A Life for the Tsar, Act 4) mono (6:14) band 2. Tchaikovsky: Lensky’s Aria (Eugene Onegin, Act 2) (6:24) band 3. Rimsky-Korsakov: The sun sinks low (May Night) (3:18) band 4. Tchaikovsky: Don Juan’s Serenade, Op. 38 No. 1 (2:48) band 5. Tchaikovsky: At the Ball, Op. 38 No. 3 (3:20) band 6. Rachmaninov: Spring Waters, Op. 14, No. 4 (1:56) band 7. Rachmaninov: How fair this spot, Op. 21 No. 7 (1:44) band8. Rachmaninov: Romance of the Young Gypsy (Aleko) (1:12)





lp1099