Leyla Gencer was asked only
twice to record for major recording companies. Both offers came directly from the famous
conductor Tullio Serafin. He was planning to make two opera recordings (La Traviata and Simon Boccanegra) for two major recording companies. At first
Serafin was planning to work with Maria Callas in La Traviata but since she had recorded the same opera
in 1953 for Cetra label, according to her contract she didn’t have the right to
record it for another label. Knowing Gencer’s success as Violetta, Serafin wanted to collaborate with Gencer but according
to her, both offers were prevented by Callas. In the end Serafin recorded La Traviata with Anonietta Stella for
the label Emi in 1956.
Gencer may not be considered
one of the recording artists buttodayher numerous (over 150) opera, concert and recital
recordings are available in the music markets on LPs, CDs and DVDs even single vinyls. Such high
number of recordings gave her the title of “Queen of Pirates”.Here’s a list of her recordings: Macbeth (12
recordings), Lucrezia Borgia (10
recordings), Norma (8 recordings), La Gioconda, Aida, La Forzadel destino (6
recordings), Anna Bolena, Belisario, Simon Boccanegra (5 recordings), Maria Stuarda, Le Martyrs,
Alceste, Don Carlo, Don Giovanni, La Battaglia di Legnano, Ernani (4 recordings), Un ballo in maschera, Rigoletto,
Gerusalemme, Il trovatore, I vespri Siciliani, Agnese di Hohenstaufen,
Elizabetta Regina d’Inghilterra, Medea in Corinto, Caterina Cornaro, Medea, I
Puritani (3 recordings), I due
Foscari, Attila, Tosca, Les dialogue des Carmelites, Idomeneo, L’Incoronazione
di Poppea, Werther, Cavalleria Rusticana, La prova di un’Opera seria, Roberto
Devereux, Lucia di Lammermoor, Francesca da Rimini, La Vestal (2 recordings) and single recordings of La
Traviata, Pikovaya Dama, Yevgeny Onyegin, La Falena, Guillaume Tell, Monte
Ivnor, Turandot, Suor Angelica, madama Butterfly, Il Tabarro, L’ange de feu, Lo
Straniero, Lassasinio nella Catedrale, Saffo, Adriana Lecouvreur, Albert
Herring, Beatrice di Tenda.
Gencer’s recordings of
Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, Rossini’s Stabat Mater and Donizetti’s Requiem per Bellini and the recordings
of her recitals and concerts, famous for their highly
distinguished programs; (1956, 1974 and 1976 in Torino, in 1975 and
1979-Venice, 1975-Spoleto, 1976- Trieste, 1958 and 1978-Milan, 1979-Treviso,
1980, 1981 and 1985-Paris, 1981-Palermo and 1984-Naples) are available on CDs.
Her Masterclass Scuola della Regine
about Donizetti Queens (Anna Bolena,
Maria Stuarda ve Roberto Devereux)
which she gave for Rai television in 1982 is also available on DVD.
Only a very few of these
recordings were made at studios. The majority of them so called “pirate
recordings” were made under bad circumstances at opera houses where the artists
didn’t receive any copyright fees. Rumour has it that, there are many recordings
of Gencer such as Manon (1958 San
Francisco), Rigoletto (1958 San
Francisco/Los Angeles), Lucia di
Lammermoor (1957 San Francisco/Los Angeles), Aida (1963, 1966 La Scala Milan), Les Contes d’Hoffmann (1957 Palermo), Mefistofele (1958 La Scala Milan), Tosca (1961 Vienna), La
Traviata (1957 Vienna/San Francisco/Los Angeles/San Diego/Sacramento, 1958
Philadelphia), Francesca da Rimini
(1956 San Francisco/Los Angeles), Otello
(1962 Genova) and La Sonnambula (1959
Naples) which are still hidden in archives. The role of Elsa in Tannhauser is
also in Gencer’s repertoire but due to a strike at the opera house, the
performances were postponed to further dates on which Gencer had other opera
engagements. Consequently she couldn’t sing the role. BBC Television also broadcast her Glyndebourne Figaro on 29 August 1963.
Depite her decleration of
“British and American ciritics never liked me”, England’s biggest opera
festival Glyndebourne released the recording of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro of 1963 through its own record label. Gencer’s
brilliant Contessa performance is
worth listening. Again through its own recording label, Covent Garden Opera of
London released the recording of the mythical Don Giovanni production conducted by Georg Solti and directed by
Franco Zeffirelli in which Gencer sang Donna
Anna. Speaking of Mozart, one must mention Idomeneo premiered at La Scala in 1968. Gencer’s performance under
the baton of Wolfgang Sawallisch was undoubtedly one of Gencer’s most powerful
Mozart interpretations. Gencer’s interpretation of the role Elettra in the Italian style received
the best reviews from Italian opera critics. This performance can be found in
La Scala’s 1968 recording.
Among Gencer’s recordings
there are also DVDs in black and white. Verdi’s Il Trovatore in which she sang with legendary tenor Mario del
Monaco is a masterpiece. And two DVDs of Verdi’s Aida recorded in 1963 and 1966 at Arena di Verona are some of
Gencer’s best performances. Her interpretation of Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni
DVD which was recorded for Rai TV in 1960 is absolutely remarkable. Despite her
great success as Charlotte, Werther was unfortunately performed in
Italian as it was very common at that time, but this recording didn’t become
popular because of today’s opera standards.
Q U E E N O F P I R A T E S -II
Renato Caccamo: A judge, a music lover, a collector or a pirate?
Caccamo, Gencer and Pizzi
If you’re not interested in the Italian
politics, you haven’t probably heard of Renato Caccamo. Apart from being a
serious prosecutor, he’s also a great music lover, a collector who possesses thousands
of records, but he’s also a person that made pirate recordings. But he never
sold any of those recordings; he just gave them to his friends and companions
as gifts. I first heard of Renato Caccamo from Leyla
Gencer during one of our conversations in the 90’s when I met her. Actually,
she hadn’t said his name, she’d just mentioned that the “Milan Prosecutor” was
a fan of hers. And after many years, I
found out about the importance of the Prosecuter Renato Caccamo on Leyla
Gencer’s career.
DVD recording of Paris Concert
As far as I remember, I first met Renato
Caccamo in Istanbul, when we were at Leyla Gencer’s apartment (I guess it was in
2006) and when he found out that I was a fan of hers as well, he took a DVD out
of his pocket and gave it to me hastily. It was the video recording of Gencer’s
Paris recital in 1985 and I was extremely happy about acquiring that record
which was absolutely rare. Gencer had mentioned Caccamo only a few
times as “The Milan Prosecutor” but she’d never talked about their friendship
or shared information about him. As I later found out from Gencer’s friends,
Caccamo had a major importance on Leyla Gencer’s career. Caccamo recorded all of Gencer’s
performances. By the way, Renato Caccamo didn’t record only Gencer’s concerts;
his hobby was to record almost all the concerts that he attended, make
collections and then give those recordings to his friends as gifts. Thereby,
most of Leyla Gencer’s concerts that weren’t broadcasted in radio or television
were somehow passed on and consequently, those recordings were released by the labels,
later giving Leyla Gencer the nickname: “The Queen of the Pirates”. Certainly, the mentioned pirate recordings
have poor sound quality, but they are critically important since they’re the
evidences of Gencer’s long and succesful career. Recently, I saw this recording in Youtube
whilst doing a research on Gencer, which I’m also sharing in the below. It’s an extremely interesting recording
and it also contains information about Leyla Gencer. Especially, it’s thrilling to know that Domingo,
Gencer, Caccamo, Pollini and Dino Ciani interpreted the whole La Traviata all
together after a concert, until morning. There’s also a short audio recording
available. Of course, I suggest you to listen to it considering that it was
recorded after midnight. Apart from his relationship with Leyla
Gencer, I find Renato Caccamo’s life and personality quite interesting and I
suggest you to watch the related Youtube link that I’m sharing with you.
JEFFREY SWAN REMEMBERS RENATO CACCAMO
2018.01.18
Presented by Jeffrey Swann
ARSC New York / Chapter Januaary Meeting
West 140th Street & Convent
Avenue, New York Or enter at 138th Street off Convent Avenue Shepard Hall (the
Gothic building) – Recital Hall (Room 95, ground floor). An elevator is in the
centre of the building.
The New York
Chapter of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections presents its January
2018 program:
Renato Caccamo was
born 26 August 1934 in Siderno, Calabria in Italy's deep South. His love of
music began early and was centred on the piano. In Rome, he studied Law and
also studied piano at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia. He was he was in his mid-20's
when he moved to Milan in the late 50s. He became both a criminal judge and a
devotee of that city’s concert life, his interest focused on the Teatro alla
Scala. Because of unique opportunities stemming from his important social
position, his persistence and an indefatigable energy, he became La Scala's de
facto archivist in the early 60s. For the next 20 years he recorded (or had
recorded for him on first class sound equipment) not only everything at La
Scala — operas and concerts — but also virtually everything of substance in all
of Italy's major venues: RAI, Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, various
festivals, etc. He recorded almost everything, but his chief interests were
opera (originally Wagner) and piano, his own instrument. He became close
friends with many major musical celebrities during this period, e.g. Abbado,
Pollini, Muti, Weissenberg, Leyla Gencer, Nikita Magaloff, Dino Ciani, and many
others, due, at least in part, because he was so useful to them in making
copies of performances from his ever-growing collection. I myself became his
friend in 1975 when I won the first Dino Ciani piano competition at La Scala.
Ciani had tragically died in an auto accident the year before at the age of 32,
and for the next 36 years Renato's apartment in Piazza Borromeo was my chief
European residence. During the first part of this period, hardly a day passed
without a call from someone such as Abbado or Muti or Pollini or Accardo to
request a copy of some specific performance. And every day recordings from
Europe and America and, occasionally, Japan would arrive in exchange for
recordings that he had made. So, the collection became gigantic (and rather out
of control). In the meantime, Renato had become an increasingly powerful and
important judge. His position at retirement was President of the Court of
Appeals, Fourth District (Milan). Due to the temporary liberalization of piracy
laws in the late 80s, many of Renato's tapes were becoming commercial records.
With the loss of exclusivity, Renato’s zeal to record substantially diminished.
By the mid 90's his passion for collecting was mostly in the realm of books, of
which he possessed 80-90,000 volumes. At his death, on 6 September 2011,
Renato's collection of recordings was in a sadly confused state. The catalogues
were long out of date, and not all of the older recordings had been migrated to
more durable formats. The entire collection is now housed at La Scala, but
inaccessible because the lack of resolution of privacy and copyright issues.
The collection also includes something like 10,000 hours of video recordings
(many informal) made between 1995 and his death. There are extraordinary
treasures buried there, some of which I will describe.
Jeffrey Swann is currently Artistic Director of the Dino Ciani Festival & Academy
in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy; Professor of Piano at New York University; and the
President’s Distinguished Artist-in-Residence at Northern Arizona University.
Himself a native of Northern Arizona, he studied with Alexander Uninsky at
Southern Methodist University, and with Beveridge Webster and Adele Marcus at
The Juilliard School, where he received the B.M., M.M. and D.M.A. Degrees. He
won first prize in the Dino Ciani Competition sponsored by Milan’s La Scala; a
gold medal at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels; and top honours at
the Warsaw Chopin, Van Cliburn, Vianna da Motta and Montreal Competitions, as
well as the Young Concert Artists auditions in New York City. His large and
varied repertoire embraces more than 60 concertos and solo works ranging from
Bach to Boulez. His performing career has taken him throughout the United
States, Europe, Latin America and Asia, appearing with major orchestras and
conductors. He lectures regularly at the Bayreuth Festival, and at Wagner
Societies in the United States and Italy, and is a frequent judge at
competitions. He has recorded for DG, RCA Italiana, Fonit-Cetra, Replica,
Agorà, and Music and Arts.
L’uomo che ha condannato Bettino
Craxi a un decennio di reclusione nei processi Eni-Sai e per le mazzette della
metropolitana milanese si è spento a Milano la mattina di martedì 6 settembre,
al termine di una lunga malattia. Renato Caccamo, presidente della quarta
sezione della Corte d’Appello di Milano negli anni di Tangentopoli, si era
costruito, condanna dopo condanna, una fama di inflessibilità, sempre
rivendicata con orgoglio contro il “generale lassismo”. Pochissimo incline a
dichiarazioni, Caccamo aveva comunque raccontato alla stampa di aver fatto
parte dei giovani socialisti e di aver sempre votato Psi prima di trasformarsi
nell’incubo della classe dirigente del partito.
Di lui si diceva che si vantasse
di non aver mai assolto nessuno: leggenda smentita dalla discussa sentenza
del 2006 sulla strage di Linate a favore dei direttori degli aeroporti milanesi
e anche, anni prima, dall’assoluzione di Berlusconi per la compravendita dei
terreni di Macherio. Alle costanti, inevitabili critiche di chi gli contestava
di ragionare come un pubblico ministero più che come un giudice o lo liquidava
come “talebano” opponeva le numerose conferme ottenute in Cassazione e la
certezza che nessuno avrebbe mai contestato la limpidezza delle sue
motivazioni.
La vita di Caccamo, però, era
un’altra. Trascinato da una passione musicale insaziabile, ha frequentato per
decenni tutti i concerti e tutte le serate d’opera non solo milanesi stringendo
amicizie profonde con gli artisti che spesso, finiti gli applausi, si intrattenevano
a cena a casa sua. E lui, un po’ ossessivamente, registrava, riprendeva tutto:
la musica, ma anche la calca in camerino, le discussioni. Le sue registrazioni,
autorizzate o no (alla Scala era stato Paolo Grassi a fornirgli un
lasciapassare), nell’ultimo periodo erano spesso solo un doppione di quelle
realizzate dai teatri. Ma in anni non troppo remoti costituivano l’unica
documentazione esistente di esecuzioni anche eccelse. Basta ricordare Leyla
Gencer, il grande soprano che nessuna major discografica aveva messo sotto
contratto.
Anche nella passione e nella
sacrosanta partigianeria musicale Caccamo conservava un giudizio
indipendente e aggiornato sera per sera: apprezzava una buona esecuzione anche
se veniva da un artista di cui aveva poca stima e riservava stroncature
sprezzanti alle “serate no” dei suoi prediletti. Vita pubblica e passione
musicale si sono intrecciate nel 2004, quando Caccamo ha vigorosamente preso le
parti del Sovrintendente scaligero Carlo Fontana nel conflitto con il Direttore
musicale Riccardo Muti raccogliendo un dossier sull’operato di Mauro Meli,
fortemente voluto dal Maestro alla Sovrintendenza, nelle precedenti esperienze
di gestione. Negli ultimi anni la lotta contro la malattia è stata soprattutto
una lotta per continuare ad essere ai concerti: nel 2007 a Philadelphia
Riccardo Chailly dovette spiegare personalmente alla security della Verizon
Hall che “sì, questo signore può registrare”. Solo pochi mesi fa l’ultima
trasferta, al Festival Mahler di Lipsia.
