Day 26: The State of Louisiana gets its Just Deserts

Hey everyone! Welcome to Day 26!

For today I wrapped up the remaining recordings from Toscanini's seventh season with NBC.


Verdi: Act III from Rigoletto - May 25th, 1944

Toscanini's final act as Music Director of La Scala was to take the company on a wildly successful tour of Austria and Germany in May of 1929. Musicologist Alfred Einstein attended the Berlin performances of this tour, which featured six operas in all: Falstaff, Il Trovatore, Manon Lescaut, Aida, Lucia di Lamermoor, and Rigoletto. Writing in the Berliner Tagblatt, Einstein had this to say about these performances:

"Let us hope that the German artists who attended this performance have learned something… Even if the Scala tour had nothing to offer us but a lesson in a true style for Italian opera, that would in itself be an important factor… For the Germans, the Italian operatic style is generally considered according to traditional criteria: the singer who calmly takes his time and exaggerates high notes, orchestral crescendo violently worked up to the final dynamic explosion, save phrasing,… and instead - instead, here are fortissimo which are not shouted at all, a totality not drowned in cheap melodrama, but rather passionate and without rhetoric."

These words were undoubtedly taken quite graciously by Toscanini, who always wanted to be considered an "honest musician."

During Toscanini's third term at La Scala between 1920 and 1929, it seemed to be his mission to set the record straight about  the music of Verdi. The Italian master's operas had received incalculable abuse over the decades from vain singers and lackadaisical orchestras. The Italian public had gotten so used to hearing this music in a form that was torn at the seams that Verdi's own powerful writing was rarely discernible. Harvey Sachs notes that "Every little provincial theatre in the country performed these works according to the local requirements - with or without certain instruments, with or without certain arias or ensembles, and so on." Toscanini did a great deal to change this during his years at La Scala - gratuitous mannerisms were to become much less frequent in Italy following the conductor's reforms.

This outstanding recording of the final act of Rigoletto is a perfect example of how emotionally overwhelming it can be to take Verdi at his word, without the mannerisms that had lain encrusted over his scores for so many years. The moment the hunchback realizes he has killed his own daughter is so crushing in this performance that a palpable gasp is quite clearly heard from the audience (it was recorded live at Madison Square Garden). This is one of the most shattering moments I have heard in any opera recording, and the radiant strains of "La donna è mobile" from the philandering Duke become painfully ironic when juxtaposed with this anguished cry of Rigoletto. It is most unfortunate that Toscanini did not perform the rest of this opera on this concert, but this powerful excerpt will have to do. It would be another six months before Toscanini would record a complete opera with the NBC Symphony, but that's tomorrow's story.

Puccini: Intermezzo from Act III of Manon Lescaut - July 2nd, 1944

Although Toscanini conducted many productions of Puccini's operas during the first half of his career and knew the composer extremely well, he sadly left very few recordings of his friend's music. All Toscanini left for posterity was this recording of the Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut and the extremely important complete recording of La bohème, which we will come to early next week.

There is a refreshing directness about this recording of the Manon Lescaut excerpt that does nothing to diminish its ravishing beauty. Puccini's orchestra is oftentimes given a polished sheen that is in disturbing contrast to the emotionally tortured drama unfolding around it (Herbert von Karajan, I'm looking at you). Toscanini goes for none of that, and gives this music all of the raw intensity of one who had spent the majority of his career in the theatre. There are still poignant string portamentos and lush sonorities in this recording, but Toscanini doesn't let you forget that this opera is a tragedy. Manon, one of those characters who was once euphemistically referred to as a "fallen woman", has been condemned to   wander the vast deserts of (wait for it…) Louisiana, and Toscanini makes you feel both the pain and the nostalgia of this powerful music. Puccini may have had a rather mystical sense of geography, but there is no question he wore the most honest and penetrating of hearts on his sleeve.

Sibelius: The Swan of Tuonela - August 27th, 1944

This Nordic cousin of Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead gets a moodily brooding performance from Toscanini, with beautifully atmospheric playing from the strings. Sadly, the solo English Horn phrases this music in such a flat and lifeless manner that this reading never fully plumbs the full depths of this depiction of the Finnish underworld (and yes, I am fully aware of the irony of using the word "lifeless" as a derogatory adjective while writing about a piece that depicts the journey to the afterlife, so don't bother pointing that out).

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That's it for Day 26! Check back tomorrow for Fidelio, the first complete opera Toscanini led at NBC.

See you tomorrow!