Sopranos Studer, Gruberova Duel in ‘Lucia,’ ‘Traviata’

DONIZETTI: “Lucia di Lammermoor.” Cheryl Studer, Placido Domingo, Juan Pons, Samuel Ramey, others; London Symphony, Ion Marin, conductor. Deutsche Grammophon 435 309-2.

DONIZETTI: “Lucia di Lammermoor.” Edita Gruberova, Neil Shicoff, Alexandru Agache, Alastair Miles, others; London Symphony, Richard Bonynge, conductor. Teldec 9031-72306-2.

VERDI: “La Traviata.” Cheryl Studer, Luciano Pavarotti, Juan Pons; forces of the Metropolitan Opera, James Levine, conductor. Deutsche Grammophon 435 797-2.

VERDI: “La Traviata.” Edita Gruberova, Neil Shicoff, Giorgio Zancanaro; London Symphony, Carlo Rizzi, conductor. Teldec 9031-76348-2.

These four releases provide a throat-to-throat confrontation between two of our leading sopranos. Studer is the clear winner as Violetta, offering a lush, full-voiced reading that commands the needed agility for Act I as well as passionate strength for such passes as “Amami, Alfredo” and “Gran Dio, morir si giovine.” Gruberova is at her best in the first, offering a wistful, delicate “Ah, fors’ e lui.” Elsewhere she lacks in both power and idiomatic security.

As Lucia, Studer, who eschews the traditional, if unwritten, E-flats in the Mad Scene, provides a weighty, strongly sung portrayal in the Callas/Sutherland mode. Gruberova clings more to the lighter tradition of Toti dal Monte and Lily Pons, but her scooping up to climactic top notes is annoying. As with her Violetta, she doesn’t make one care much.

Pavarotti and Domingo are the DG tenors, the former in strained voice as Alfredo (his high C in the cabaletta sounds mechanical) and the latter in lustrous shape, not even bothered by the cruelly high tessitura of Edgardo’s “Bell’alma inamorata.” Shicoff displays lyric freshness as both Alfredo and Edgardo.

Zancanaro’s smooth assurance as Germont is preferable to Juan Pons’ gruffness, which, however, suits his work as Enrico very well. Ramey is in patrician voice as Raimondo. Agache and Miles in Teldec’s “Lucia” are several strata below their colleagues on either label.

Bonynge’s conducting of “Lucia” is dull and rhythmically slack. Marin, perhaps influenced by Studer, is surprisingly potent dramatically. There is no contest between the hesitant time-beating of Rizzi in the Verdi and the sensitively expressive conducting of Levine, whose Met orchestra has seldom sounded better.