Good News for Rossini Faithful

While the faithful await, with diminishing hopes, the appearance of some major, previously unrecorded Rossini (there’s plenty) in this, his bicentennial year, there continues to be good news from the re-release front.

EMI Classics has returned to circulation its long-unavailable studio re-creations of Glyndebourne Festival productions of the 1950s and ‘60s: “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” (64162), “La Cenerentola” (64183) and the never widely disseminated “Le Comte Ory” (64180), the comic jewel of the composer’s French period. Each is a two-disc, mid-priced set.

Under the musical and editorial supervision of conductor Vittorio Gui, who had masterminded the major Italian Rossini revival of the late-1920s, these scores, notably the much-abused “Barbiere,” were cleansed of dubious accretions and resubmitted gleaming fresh.

“Barbiere,” led by Gui, as are all three operas, with rare incisiveness and instrumental detailing, shows us how much better Rossini understood what would make his music “sound” than did successive generations of tamperers.

For instance, Basilio’s “Calunnia” aria sung in the original key of D (rather than the usual C)--here by basso Carlo Cava--shows the music master as a borderline hysteric, far more dangerous than the usually encountered bungling clown. Rosina has something to worry about with this loaded cannon as her silly guardian’s co-conspirator.

The Figaro of Sesto Bruscantini is virile and resourceful, amusing without resorting to line-destroying showoff vocal additions or buffo mannerisms (and Bruscantini could be--perhaps still is--one of the most inventively funny men on the operatic stage).

On this recording (she never sang the role on the stage), Victoria de los Angeles proves a worthy successor to Conchita Supervia, the mezzo-soprano Rosina of Gui’s earlier revivals. Los Angeles, although a soprano rather than a mezzo, performs the music in its original keys, easily encompassing the not very low notes the composer threw her way.

And she sings with fetching agility while projecting not the once-time-honored minx but a young lady of steely determination and wit against whose will Dr. Bartolo--a charming comic turn by Ian Wallace--doesn’t stand a chance.

Tenor Luigi Alva never really possessed the easy command of fioritura to do this music complete justice. But his tone in 1962 was sweet and true, and he is a likable, aristocratic Almaviva.

While it may not have been done to accommodate Alva’s slender resources, the omission of the Count’s demanding second-act aria--which also served as Cenerentola’s rondo finale--is defended by Gui on the basis of Rossini’s own practice.

The Royal Philharmonic, then Sir Thomas Beecham’s orchestra, responds to Gui’s leadership with precision and dash.

In “La Cenerentola,” Gui directs superb forces identified specifically as the Glyndebourne Festival Orchestra and Chorus. The vocal high points are contributions by the low-voiced men: Wallace’s lovably ludicrous Don Magnifico and Bruscantini’s alternatingly uppity and befuddled Dandini.

Tenor Juan Oncina is the Prince, dramatically bland but vocally at ease, and in the title role Spanish mezzo Marina de Gabarain manages the coloratura well enough while creating a sympathetic character. Her notes above the staff, however, tend to fall short of the mark.

Interestingly Gui, that staunchest defender of the composer’s wishes (cuts notwithstanding--they were as much a fact of recorded life as of staged presentation at the time), ditches Rossini’s frail postlude to Cenerentola’s final burst of vocal acrobatics in favor of a repetition of the radiantly energetic closing measures of the opera’s overture. Nice touch.

The “Comte Ory” recording was a revelation 35 years ago, above all of the score itself. It remains hugely convincing, even with the recent appearance of a more complete and textually accurate version led by John Eliot Gardiner (Philips 422 406).

This is perhaps the cheekiest and most sophisticated of the composer’s stage creations, its humor based on varieties of sexual flimflam, not least among them the impersonation of nuns by the lecherous Count and his rowdy followers.

Uncommon importance is accorded orchestra and chorus in “Le Comte Ory,” and Gui’s Glyndebourne forces deliver the goods quite spectacularly.

In the title role, Oncina exudes the right kind of hauteur and suggestiveness, but the extreme range of the part occasionally defeats him. The object of his desires is the delectable Sari Barabas, who while likewise not finding the stratospheric going easy, refuses, like Oncina, to pursue easy solutions.

The one French member of the cast of Rossini’s French comedy is baritone Michel Roux, a stylistic paragon, as the Count’s equally randy advance man.

Finally, don’t pass up the superb reissues (Philips 434 016, three mid-priced CDs) of all 26 surviving Rossini overtures, recorded during the 1970s by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields under a pre-knighthood, pre-big-band Neville Marriner. It’s three-plus hours of some of the wittiest, cleverest music in captivity, done to a delectable turn by these artists.