ON THE RECORD : Christopher Columbus: 2 Operatic Rarities

Among the noteworthy musical byproducts of the Columbus quincentennial are recordings of a pair of all-but-unknown operas on the subject of the “discovery” of America. One is by an all-but-unknown composer, the Italian Alberto Franchetti (1860-1942); the other is by Manuel de Falla, a composer whose great worth we are only now beginning to realize.

Franchetti’s “Cristoforo Colombo” comes to recordings in a handsome production (Koch-Schwann 3-1030-2, 3 CDs) drawn from live performances last year in Frankfurt. Falla’s “Atlantida” (Memories 4464/5, 2 CDs) is from a tape of the posthumous world premiere at La Scala, Milan, in 1962.

Franchetti disdained the verismo style of his friends Mascagni and Puccini, adhering instead to grandiose Wagnerian principles of dramaturgy with more than a hint of Wagner’s musical language as well.

“Cristoforo Colombo,” given its unsuccessful premiere in 1892 in its subject’s birthplace, Genoa, and rarely revived since, lumbers through a windily repetitious first act set in the Spanish court. But when Franchetti hits his stride in Act II, dealing with Columbus’ first voyage to the New World, we are in the presence of gripping, imaginative music drama.

The depictions of the vastness of the sea and the first sighting of land are radiant episodes, of which any composer--including Verdi, who hardly did it better in his “Otello” and who admired Franchetti’s work--might be proud.

Set to a serviceable libretto by Luigi Illica, Puccini’s favorite collaborator, the opera has juicy parts for the men, most obviously the title character, sung with heroic spirit by Renato Bruson, and the nasty of the piece, Don Roldano, wet-blanket to the Court of Ferdinand and Isabella, powerfully projected by basso Roberto Scandiuzzi. Important too is the chorus, particularly in the tense scenes preceding the near-mutiny aboard the Santa Maria, sung with lusty dramatic involvement and ringing tone by Peter Erdei’s superb Hungarian Radio Chorus.

The excitement and grandeur are maintained in Act III, despite some dopey ballet music for the Indians. The epilogue, in which the aged, broken Columbus summons up visions of a paradise lost, its inhabitants massacred by the gold-hungry Spaniards, promises much. But the realization is more pompous than poignant, despite Bruson’s heroic effort and very strong playing, as is the case throughout the long and taxing score, by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony under the animating hand of conductor Marcello Viotti.

Still, there is enough memorable music in “Cristoforo Colombo” to make it all worthwhile. Operas of far lower quality are encountered with greater frequency.

Koch-Schwann’s documentation is a model of its kind, with exhaustive background notes, singers’ biographies and text translations.

Falla worked on “Atlantida” sporadically for some 40 years, leaving it incomplete at his death in 1946. The finished portions and a mass of sketches were entrusted to his pupil Ernesto Halffter, who organized the score and composed original music to fill the voids.

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The 1962 stage premiere--Halffter’s definitive edition dates from 1976 and has not been recorded--used an Italian translation of a Spanish text by Falla based on a 19th-Century epic poem whose author, Jacinto Verdaguer, imaginatively, if often confusingly, conflated the legend of the submerged continent of Atlantis with a fanciful life of Columbus.

The Falla-Halffter score replaces the Spanish folk style that we consider Falla’s native habitat with a strikingly original stylization of medieval church music mingled with a sort of Monteverdian arioso .

This premiere production was led by the late Thomas Schippers, who elicited scrappily vital work from the La Scala Orchestra and Chorus. Among the principals were the impetuous Columbus of baritone Gustavo Halley (a name unfamiliar to this listener), the sweet Queen Isabella of the young Teresa Stratas and a dramatically potent, if musically approximate, contribution from Giulietta Simionato as the personification of the Pyrenees, in whose fiery creation Catalonia was born, according to Verdaguer.

The recording is quite clean, with only a few very brief dropouts. The accompanying documentation is, however, appallingly sketchy: no historical note or synopsis of the complex plot, no bios, and the vocal text in Italian only.

The fillup is a hugely atmospheric live performance (Paris, 1957) of Falla’s “El Amor Brujo,” with Ataulfo Argenta conducting the Orchestre National de France with Teresa Berganza, in her youthful prime, the most accomplished and evocative of soloists.