After reading Ralph Moore’s excellent review of the Opera Rara recording of Elisabetta Regina d’Inghilterra, I re-listened to it and to the Philips recording he had reviewed in his survey of lesser-known Rossini works. I thought I’d add a few random remarks regarding the performing versions that I hope people will find interesting. I’ll try to refrain from discussion about the performances as I agree with Mr Moore’s assessments.
Both recordings were made before the critical edition of the score was available. A note on the Philips recording says it was made in cooperation with the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. The performance history in Opera Rara’s booklet indicates that a performance with roughly the same cast (only Winberg for Carreras) occurred in July 1975 at the Théâtre Antique in Arles. The Opera Rara set uses an edition of the score prepared specifically for them by Ian Schofield using a facsimile of the autograph manuscript. The Opera Rara recording runs thirteen minutes longer than Philips for reasons I’ll cover below.
A piano-vocal score based on the critical edition has yet to be published, and I’m not inclined to plop out several hundred Euros for the partitura. Consequently, I’ve not had access to either a scholarly version of the score or its critical commentary. I followed both recordings with a piano-vocal score I downloaded from the IMSLP Petrucci Music Library, which indicates the score was published in Leipzig by Breitkopf und Härtel, circa 1820. I’ve long since learned that piano vocal scores of this vintage may not match a modern recording. This score had the anomaly of containing only the set numbers; the recitatives aren’t printed, unless they were directly integrated into the following number. (It's worth noting that this is the first opera for which Rossini provided recitatives accompanied by the orchestra, albeit strings only except for where he felt the call for fuller-scored recitativo accompagnato.) Both recordings contain all the music in the printed score, with two variances.
The larger variance is that the score is missing Leicester’s second act aria completely. In his essay for Opera Rara, Jeremy Commons mentions that this was omitted from some early vocal scores. Both recordings have this piece. The other difference pertains to scena for Norfolk earlier in the second act. Opera Rara give a version of this scena that’s extended from what’s printed in the score. This includes additional phrases in the cavatina and a second verse to the cabaletta. Opera Rara separate the cavatina and cabaletta into two tracks for a total of just over eight minutes. On the Philips recording, Ugo Benelli sings exactly what’s in this score, with the shortened cavatina and one-verse cabaletta in a single five-minute-long track.
(On a side note, I’ll add that I was browsing in the shelves of the local university library last week and came upon a Kalmus vocal score of unstated and therefore unknown provenance. It had neither of the second act tenor arias. Jeremey Commons mentions that Stendhal said that these arias “were reasonably well-written” but as pieces of composition, “had a faint flavor of the commonplace, and seemed to fall rather below the high standard of the rest of the opera.” That from someone so partisan as Stendhal!)
Other than the scena mentioned above, the differences in what’s performed in each set are limited to cuts in the recitatives. From following the recitatives on the Opera Rara recording with the libretto from the Philips set, I observed these cuts can vary from a few words to a several pages. In a recorded performance, I’m not bothered by a bit of judicious trimming to the recitatives. I presume the reasons for the differences are twofold: Massini, who conducts the Philips recording, had tightened things up for a stage performance whereas Opera Rara recordings tend to take a more scholarly approach to the music, sometimes at the expense of the drama.
Oddly enough, in this case, I find the Opera Rara recording more dramatic than the Philips set. A good example is the first act duet for Elisabetta and Norfolk. I hear the anger in Caballé’s voice, but not the hurt and injured pride that Larmore conveys with the anger. Also, Antonio Siragusa just sounds nastier than the sweeter voiced Ugo Benelli.
I’ll conclude by saying that Rossini is one of my favorite composers. Each of these recordings has its own treasures, and I wouldn’t want to be without either. However, this is a work to which I return infrequently. Of the operas Rossini wrote for the Teatro San Carlo, I much prefer Otello, Mosè in Egitto, La donna del lago, and Maometto II.
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