Orchestra
Sinfonica del RAI di Torino
Arturo
Basile conductor
Leyla Gencer soprano
Giuseppe Campora tenor
Rossini Guglielmo Tell Overture
Giordani Amor ti vieta Andrea Chenier
Mozart Porgi amor Le Nozze di Figaro
Massenet Dispar vision Manon
Gounod Aria del gioielli Faust
Puccini Intermezzo Manon Lescaut
Puccini E lucevan stelle Tosca
Verdi Ecco l'orrido... Ma dall'arido stelo Un ballo in
maschera
Giordani Improvisione Andrea Chenier
Verdi Pace, pace mio dio La forza del destino
Wagner Rinezi Overture
Orchestra
Sinfonica del RAI di Torino
Arturo
Basile conductor
Leyla Gencer soprano
Verdi Timor di me?... D'amour sull'ali
rosee Il Trovatore
Verdi Pace, Pace mio Dio La forza del destino
Verdi O cieli azzurri Aida
Verdi Addio del passato La Traviata
Catalani Ebben ne andro lontana La Wally
Cetra
– 1 CD
Thanks to various “pirate” recordings of her performances, the Turkish soprano, Leyla Gencer, still has a considerable reputation, at least among opera savants. She is, in fact, the only reason that this particular review is being written. Why did a singer with a strong voice and considerable temperament have such a lacklustre recording career? The annotator, without actually saying so, suggests that there was just too much soprano competition during the 1950s—there was only so much room in the firmament. Fortunately, some people who were equipped to do so were discerning enough to tape broadcasts or surreptitiously preserve some of her live performances. She was 26 years old when she performed this Tosca in Naples. Granted, several sopranos who were at least as good as Gencer have recorded the role so this is, basically a fan-oriented release and, unfortunately, a very frustrating one for, despite high production values by Idis (“Instituto Discografico Italiano” I don’t know what the s stands for), the source is so flawed that I can only hope that there’s a better Gencer Tosca out there. High frequencies are shaved. The orchestra is heard clearly, but the singers sound far away and are sometimes drowned out or nearly so. My guess is that the mike was hanging from a side balcony high above the pit, and the singers—with the proscenium between them and the mike—are usually singing around a corner. You can tell when someone comes near the front of the stage, which isn’t very often. Gencer, when you can hear her clearly, is an earthy, impassioned Tosca but, happily, one who understands that she is supposed to be singing, not shouting. She’s got it all. I wish I could have seen her do it. Unfortunately, one sometimes has to strain to hear her because the unfavourable conditions don’t favour nuance. The singer least affected by this is, unfortunately, the unsubtle Cavaradossi, Vittorio de Santis, who bangs out his role with minimal nuance. Giuseppe Taddei is a powerful Scarpia who can actually sing his part—a worthy match for Gencer. At least, he managed to participate in two commercial recordings of the opera and, since the second of them is with Herbert von Karajan, it will probably remain available for quite some time.
The sound is considerably clearer on some 1956 recordings of four arias by Verdi, though I detected a little distortion in the loudest passages. The four are “D’amor sull’ali rosee” (without its cabaletta, unfortunately), “Pace, pace mio Dio,” “O patria mia,” and “Addio del passato.” The disc concludes with “Ebben, ne andrò lontana” from Catalani’s La Wally. Once again, it is possible to prefer one of her few peers here and there, but, for me, she’s always in the mix—these are stylish, expressive performances. Too bad they couldn’t have been attached to a better Tosca or something else.
AKİS WEEKLY MAGAZINE
RAI
Symphony Orchestra, Milan
Gianandrea Gavazzeni conductor
Leyla Gencer soprano
Donizetti Piangete voi Anna Bolena
Donizetti Vivi ingrato Roberto Devereux
Verdi Nel di della vittoria Macbeth
Verdi Ben io t'invenni Nabucco
Myto
– 1 CD
Orchestra
del RAI, Milano
Arturo Basile conductor
Leyla Gencer soprano
Puccini Un bel di vedremo Madama Butterfly
Verdi Addio del passato La Traviata
Cetra 45’
Orchestra
del RAI, Milano
Arturo Basile conductor
Leyla Gencer soprano
Verdi O cieli azzurri Aida
Catalani Ebben ne andro lontana La Wally
Cetra
45’
Orchestra
Senfonica della RAI di Milano
Alfredo Simonetto conductor
Leyla Gencer soprano
Carlo Cava bass
Mozart Non mi dir, bell'idol mio Don
Giovanni
Weber E invan la nube Der Freischütz
Verdi O cieli azzurri Aida
Verdi D'amor sull'ali rosee... Miserere Il Trovatore
Cetra – 1 LP
Incontri
Memorabili
Leyla
Gencer soprano
Luigi Infontino tenor
Donizetti Quanto è bella, quato è cara! L’Elisir d’amore
Mozart Tutte le torture Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Cilea È la storia del pastore L’Arlesiana
Verdi Pace, pace mio dio La forza del destino
Meyerbeer Mi batte .. O Paradiso dell’onde uscito L’Africaine
Puccini Senza mamma Suor Angelica
Wagner Da voi lontan, in sconosciuta terra Lohengrin
Donizetti Il dolce suonı mi colpi dua voce .. Ardon gli incensi Lucia
di Lammermoor
Cetra – 1 CD
RAI
Orchestra Sinfornica di Milano
Luciano Rosada conductor
Leyla Gencer soprano
Mozart Hallelujah from Excultate Jubilate KV165
RAI
Symphony Orchestra, Turin
Gianandrea Gavazzeni conductor
Leyla Gencer soprano
Donizetti Torna all'ospite tetto...Vieni o tu,
che ognor io chiamo Caterina Cornaro
Donizetti E Sara... in questi orribili momenti...quel sangue
versato Roberto Devereux
Donizetti O nube che lieve per l'aria Maria Stuarda
Donizetti Com’é bello Lucrezia Borgia
Warner Fonit – 1 CD
RAI Symphony Orchestra,
Turin
Gianandrea Gavazzeni conductor
Leyla Gencer soprano
Donizetti Torna all'ospite tetto...Vieni o tu, che ognor io
chiamo Caterina Cornaro
Donizetti E Sara... in questi orribili momenti...quel sangue
versato Roberto Devereux
Donizetti O nube che lieve per l'aria Maria Stuarda
Donizetti Com’é bello Lucrezia Borgia
Cetra – 1 LP
Dopo una prima fase alquanto eclettica che spaziava tra Butterfly e Lucia, Rigoletto e Assassinio nella Cattedrale, Margherita boitiana e Dialoghi delle Carmelitane, ritengo che i primi a orientare nel senso giusto le caratteristiche vocali e musicali di Leyla Gencer siano stati Serafin e Gui. Con la Beatrice di Tenda e con la Norma. Una nuova piattaforma belliniana, dove vocalismo e senso del tragico trovano la chiave di volta del melodrammismo ottocentesco. Con una punta nel rinnova mento teatrale di Gluck: quell’ALCESTI, ancora con Vittorio Gui, che costituì uno dei più importanti spettacoli dei « Maggi » di Remigio Paone e di Luciano Alberti.
Senza indulgere alle. graduatorie e al gioco dei raffronti che da quando esiste teatro-(recitato e cantato) ha sempre costituito una pratica dominante, la Gencer si è inserita tra le protagoniste di tutta quella operazione critica ed esecutiva caratteristica del nostro tempo: i rinascimenti riguardanti Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti e Verdi.
E insieme, rinascimento di uno stile recuperato da una tradizione con l'aggiunta di una ricerca inerente alle esperienze vissute nel nostro secolo.
I titoli, nella carriera della Gencer, sono quelli noti: Beatrice di Tenda, I due Foscari, Gerusalemme, La Battaglia BATTAGLIA DI LEGNANO, BOLENA, MARIA STUARDA, DEVEREUX, LUCREZIA BORGIA, BELISARIO, ecc.
Inutile ripetere oggi quali siano le sue caratteristiche e prerogative, quali i momenti di maggiore risultato, poiché sono temi di continua presenza nei discorsi elaborati sulla vita melodrammatica odierna. Ciò che va sottolineato, da parte di chi l'ebbe a collaboratrice in molte opere, sono la coscienza, l'impegno, la ricerca studiosa. Ripetere un'opera già eseguita, è con lei sempre la ricerca di nuove soluzioni e di ulteriori affinamenti. Mai una ripetizione pertinente alla « routine » professionale.
Metodo di lavoro che attesta la qualità di un livello artistico, e l'intensità di una passione musicale.
FROM LP BOOKLET
Omaggio a Leyla Gencer
Da quell'insieme ineffabile. di «paradiso terrestre» e di « Grand Guignol antropologico » che si è soliti ‘definire « mondo lirico » emergono, a scadenze più o meno prevedibili, alcuni sintomatici esemplari che — in misura più vistosa e clamorosa dell'usuale – riassumono per una loro conformazione psicosomatica sgargiante e perentoria tutte le caratteristiche di una « specie » che solo i più apatici e meno immaginifici osservatori si ostinano a considerare in via di estinzione. Alla sommità di questa ipospecie domina, da due secoli abbondanti, idolatrata, irrisa e indistruttibile, la Primadonna. Primadonna: l'espressione non è più gergalmente di uso corrente ma, nella realtà, tutto tende a confermarci che proprio in quest'ultimo entennio essa ha riconquistato l'opulenta sovranità dei momenti del suo maggiore splendore (il mitico primo ottocento di Giuditta Pasta e di Maria Malibran). Il riferimento d'obbligo all'avvento di Maria Callas è ormai talmente liso e consunto, ovvio e acquisito da considerarlo evento storico a tutti gli effetti ufficiale. Non a caso Antonio Gualerzi, nel tratteggiare le più vistose vicende del vocalismo femminile di questi ultimi anni, ha varato un inedito quanto esplicito calendario che parte dall'anno Primo D.C. (Dopo Callas). Per noi « fratelli in Callas » siffatto calendario potrebbe agevolmente soppiantare quello gregoriano, quello giuliano e quello massonico se il nostro impagabile oltranzismo fosse destinato ad ottenere ancora più largo seguito di adepti fra le persone prive di senso comune quanto ricche di sfrenata immaginazione.
Potremmo così rendere ufficiale e vigente tutta una serie di festività e di ricorrenze che potrebbero andare dalla data di nascita della Sutherland e della Caballé alla data del debutto della Horne o della Verrett fino all'avvento del personaggio che ci accingiamo a celebrare: « Nostra Signora dei Turchi », comunemente nota, idolatrata, chiacchierata, amata o invisa, osannata o negletta secondo il nome di Leyla Gencer.
Il cenno biografico è d'obbligo, anche se il più delle volte superfluo. Nata ad Istanbul da una famiglia della più antica nobiltà turca (con l'innesto della bizzarra volitività e delle pregiudiziali cattoliche della madre polacca) Leyla Gencer rivelò da giovanissima una spiccata predisposizione alle idealità ed alle ambizioni artistiche. Vagheggiava di diventare una grande attrice di prosa, oppure una famosa danzatrice, o magari una archeologa o una celebre scrittrice e, fu solo in seguito, che le sue ambizioni si indirizzarono verso il canto trasformandosi, nel 1950, in un'assidua e proficua frequenza ai corsi di canto tenuti dalla non dimenticata Giannina Arangi Lombardi al Teatro di Stato di Ankara, città dove prese i primi contatti col palcoscenico cantando nel coro di quel teatro. A quell'epoca poteva sembrare ancora ragionevole che una giovane ed ambiziosa can tante intravedesse nell'Italia il posto ideale per iniziare la propria carriera. Terminati gli studi, nel 1954, Leyla salpa, quindi, alla volta dell’Italia, approda a Napoli e, dopo una breve audizione al San Carlo, « conquista » Pasquale Di Costanzo e viene scritturata per alcune recite « estive » della Cavalleria Rustica na; ma è già pronto un contratto per la successiva stagione del San Carlo; opere prescelte: Madama Butterfly e Eugenio Oneghin, le si offre così l'occasione di imbattersi in Tullio Serafin, il quale oltre ad essere un direttore da non dimenticare, rimarrà come uno dei pochi illuminati e precorritori esperti di vocalistica del nostro tempo.
Serafin, come aveva già fatto con la Olivero e con la Callas, — come farà di là a poco con la Sutherland — da un tocco definitivo alla tecnica vocale della Gencer e le offre le prime indicazioni di massima per quella che sarà la precisa specializzazione delia cantante. Nel 55, infatti, le affida, il ruolo di Violetta al Massimo di Palermo, per poi presceglierla — due anni dopo — alla Fenice per il ruolo della Contarini nei Due Foscari. Nel frattempo l’attività di Leyla si era andata intensificando; aveva cantato la Traviata in molti teatri europei (persino all'Opera di Vienna con Karajan), aveva compiuto le sue prime esperienze televisive (Werther nel 55 e Trovatore nel 57) ed aveva fatto il suo debutto negli Stati Uniti (Traviata e Lucia a San Francisco, e Turandot a Los Angeles).
Intanto vengono presi i primi contatti con la Scala: nel 57 Antonino Votto le affida il ruolo di Leonora in una edizione de La Forza del Destino rappresentata a Colonia dai complessi scaligeri mentre, pochi mesi prima, le era stato affidato un ruolo non particolarmente impegnante nei Dialoghi delle Carmelitane di Poulenc (una operazione di sondaggio tipica della, un tempo proverbiale, cautela scaligera).
Anche la seconda esperienza di Leyla alla Scala (Assassinio nella Cattedrale di Pizzetti) non è destinata ad offrirle una « chance » risolutiva. Una prima buona occasione le verrà fornita, a poca distanza, con il ruolo di Margherita nel Mefistofele. Nel luglio del 58 il primo incontro con quelle « regine » donizettiane alle quali, in seguito, Leyla legherà indissolubilmente il proprio nome e la propria fama trasformandosi da « soprano » in « Primadonna » (una differenza scientificamente irrazionale e indimostrabile, quanto psicologicamente lampante e sostanziale).
Il merito di questo primo accenno di « mutazione » è di Gianandrea Gavazzeni che la sceglie come protagonista di una edizione radiofonica dell’Anna Bolena,‘riconoscendole così, per la prima volta, il diritto ad una successione — ancora tutta teorica — al trono sul quale sedeva ancora indisturbata Maria Callas.
La carriera della Gencer procede spedita e sempre più ricca di rimarchevoli affermazioni; il repertorio si allarga in tutte le direzioni quale conseguenza e conferma di una eccezionale duttilità vocale e di una gamma ricchissima di intuizioni psicologiche: Lucia ed Amina, Gilda e Manon, Elvira e Butterfly si alternano alle più volitive e intense eroine verdiane in una galleria di personaggi che abbraccia anche il repertorio mozartiano, quello russo e l’'operà contemporanea.
La stagione 60-61 vede la nostra Leyla al centro di due avvenimenti destinati a dare una svolta definitiva alla sua carriera: nel dicembre del 60 subentra vittoriosamente a Maria Callas nelle repliche del Poliuto alla Scala e, nell'estate successiva, viene prescelta’ da Gianandrea Gavazzeni per una eccezionale edizione del Simon Boccanegra al Festival di Salisburgo.
Nel 62 affronta per la prima volta il ruolo di Norma e, successivamente, arricchisce il suo repertorio di due ruoli destinati a preparare l'avvento di quella che chiameremo la « Gencer seconda maniera »: Elena nella « Jerusalem » e la belliniana Beatrice di Tenda.
Tutto è ormai pronto, con la non calcolata meticolosità della predestinazione, all'avvenimento che porterà Leyla Gencer al centro dell'attenzione di critici, musicologhi, uomini e di quei vasti settori di pubblico che, dopo l’inevitnare della parabola callasiana, attendevano con un senso quasi catrice che venisse a rompere la sterilità dell’ ovvio e del prevedibile « routine »: di qualcuno che sapesse rinnovare entusiasmi polemiche, dedizioni incondizionate e conseguenti reazioni di rigetto a catena ponendosi al centro di quel prezioso armamentario di idealismi, irrazionalità e contraddizioni del quale il rituale lirico non può fare a meno se non a costo di autodistruggersi trasformandosi in una squallida « catena di montaggio » di un prodotto anfibio e insipido destinato ad apparire anacronistico e superfluo quanto più tenti di affermare una morigeratezza, un livellamento ed una equivoca funzionalità che le componenti costituzionali del « rituale » stesso categoricamente rifiutano. Ma torniamo all’avvenimento « storico » dal quale la carriera della Gencer prende una nuova svolta, un assetto definitivo. Napoli, Teatro San Carlo, 2 maggio 1964: prima ripresa nel nostro secolo del Roberto Devereux di Gaetano Donizetti. Scatta l'operazione Gencer e, simultaneamente, dopo la gloriosa parentesi della Bolena, ha inizio ufficialmente. la « Donizetti renaissance ».
La geniale versatilità vocale e la forte temperatura interpretativa di Leyla Gencer pare abbiano trovato nella regale maestosità delle eroine donizettiane la loro più naturale e congeniale destinazione. Lucrezia Borgia e Maria Stuarda, Belisario e Caterina Cornaro torneranno alla ribalta dopo la lunga dimenticanza dovuta (come sottolineò Gavazzeni) a « pigri luoghi comuni » e a « inevitabili tributi a un tempo critico destinati alla smentita che il ribaltarsi della storia renderà evidente ».
La nostra Leyla è l’ispiratrice e l’interprete ideale di questi preziosi ripescaggi, la creatrice di geniali e anticonformisti stilemi, di una solida e personalissima impalcatura drammatica ai quali si atterranno inevitabilmente — anche se con l’apporto di differenti conformazioni e organizzazioni vocali — quante diffonderanno in tutto il mondo questo repertorio riscoperto in una rinnovata temperie critica che si è lasciata spavaldamente alle spalle le sommarietà, le intransigenze, i dogmatismi di certi inattendibili — o mal programmati — « computer » che nei loro inanimati calcoli sul « bello » e sul « brutto » hanno ormai fatto « corto circuito ».
Nel noma di Donizetti si configurano al massimo grado i meriti, crescono e si stabilizzano le quotazioni di Leyla Gencer. Altre fortunate esplorazioni nel primo ottocento italiano (Saffo di Pacini, Medea di Cherubini, La Vestale di Spontini e la rossìniana Elisabetta d'Inghilterra) e una soggiogante interpretazione dell'Alceste di Gluck varata nel Maggio Fiorentino del 1966 contribuiranno ad allargare la fama della cantante e ad offrire ai « tecnici » e ai « dilettanti illuminati » nuovi argomenti di incontri e di scontri.
A questo punto cadrebbe opportuno chiedersi quali sono le componenti di fondo della folgorante, quanto ritardata e faticosa, fortuna di Leyla; dell'enorme seguito di « fans » di cui essa gode in tutto il mondo; del fatto, quanto mai indicativo, che il
suo nome segue immediatamente quello della Callas nell'indice delle più alte vendite di quella « discografia pirata» che ha diffuso in tutto il mondo ciò che la discografia ufficiale ha sistematicamente ignorato (è paradossale ma onesto riconoscerlo
proprio in occasione della pubblicazione del primo long-playing « ufficiale » della cantante). Né sarà superfluo domandarsi per quale strana convergenza di eventi una cantante che tanto dovette faticare per affermarsi quando la sua voce era fresca, integra e ligia a tutte le ortodossie della fonazione, improvvisamente balza alla notorietà e si impone all'attenzione generale nel momento in cui si « inventa », si « costruisce » una voce ed un personaggio totalmente differenti da quelli d'origine. La risposta non può essere che una e trova le radici nella superiore intelligenza, nella naturale predisposizione all’ironia e all’autosservazione della cantante che ha individuato, con maliziosa esattezza — sfruttandole a suo vantaggio — le istanze patologiche e culturali di un determinato « momento », di una maturata predisposizione del pubblico a bearsi più di emozioni intense che di prestazioni diligenti e scolastiche. La ‘cantante impone, così, senza mezzi termini la tattica del « prendere o lasciare », ripropone al pubblico ed alla critica l'« imperativo categorico «di marca callasiana:» adoratemi o detestatemi... purché non mi ignoriate ».
Di conseguenza esce dal giro della musica di consumo, delle produzioni a livello spietatamente commerciale, per dedicare la propria attività solo a preziose operazioni di recupero del dimenticato repertorio ottocentesco operazioni che, oltre al toro
specifico peso culturale, offrono due grossi vantaggi: la garanzia di collaboratori (direttori, registi e scenografi) ad alto livello ed il contatto con categorie di pubblico congenitamente predisposte a cogliere il senso preciso della presenza della cantante in un panorama lirico, almeno su terreno nazionale, quasi totalmente privo di « sex-appeal ». | risultati di. questa operazione sono pressoché perfetti e confermano tutti i caratteri di una metodologia scrupolosamente calibrata che viene a rappresentare uno degli esempi più clamorosi di «trionfo dello spirito sulla materia ».
Il critico e lo spettatore vengono categoricamente privati della loro prerogativa (spesso esercitata con. puntiglioso oltranzismo e con totale assenza di immaginazione) di procedere all’analisi del particolare, e vengono coinvolti dal flusso di un evento vocalistico — interpretativo sul quale non è sensato pronunciarsi che con una valutazione totale e riassuntiva se non a rischio di mettere allo scoperto disarmanti carenze di ordine intuitivo. La predisposizione alla regalità, la ancestrale predestinazione allo sgargiante evento drammatico, il gusto perentorio dell’invettiva, la confluenza di contraddizioni emozionali e di ina: time macerazioni esistenziali — accomunate a un senso di aurea classicità, di dolente partecipazione poetica, di mistico abbandono contemplativo — hanno un peso definitivo nella configurazione di una cantante-attrice (quale è a tutti gli effetti la Gencer « seconda maniera ») interamente protesa — come non mancò di intuire Mario Messinis — a « recuperare una pratica vccale melodrammatica e nel contempo a forarne la crisalide formale, convolgendola in una divorante tensione espressiva ». Ed e qui che si nasconde l’arma segreta di Leyla gencer: la presenza di una costante tensione espressiva che, se da una parte la autorizza a spavalde proclamazione di indipendenza nei confronti di certe regole di fonazione di uso corrente dell’altra la trova sempre « intonata » ad una rigida fedeltà filologica allo stile ed alla poetica di fondo della pagina musicale. Le teatralissime regole dei contrasti risultano sempre esaltate nel modo più illuminante. Le calcolate disinvolture, i sotterfugi abilissimi, la perizia di trasformare in un « effetto » irresistibile persino le inevitabili magagne contribuiscono a rendere sempre più significante e chiaroscurato il fraseggio, sempre più sferzante la « cabaletta » (mai intesa come floreale abbellimento ma come sviluppo e cadenza psicologica di una certa situazione formale ed espressiva). A ciò si contrappone l'inestimabile purezza, l’incorrotto nitore, la suadente dolcezza del canto « legato » a mezza voce e le risorse prodigiose di una tecnica che le consente di affrontare tutte le difficoltà della tessitura, di addomesticarle al proprio gusto ed ai propri mezzi con una infallibilità musicale che non la autorizza mai ad impropri dirottamenti stilistici se non nell’ambito di una penetrante rilettura critica, di una « riproposta » che accentua, con moderna sensibilità, quella sorta di misteriosa, sotterranea confluenza fra la tragedia elisabettiana e l’espressionismo che costituiscono la forza più pregnante e attuale, la caratteristica più « curiosa » e inesplorata della melodrammaturgia italiana del primo ottocento. Nella stessa direzione si configura e si sviluppa l'essenziale, e, insieme, polarizzante gioco scenico dell'attrice... « Nel suo modo di stare in scena, con atteggiamenti fieri, le braccia spesso alzate in segno di minaccia o di deprecazione, oppure ricondotte supplici al petto, non diremo che si manifesti intero il bernoccolo della grande arte tragica, tuttavia una idea personale di quel che la tragedia sia. E dal cipiglio corrucciato, dal risentimento con cui sfida la « divinità infernal », alla fine del primo atto, si direbbe sappia che in quell'aria confluisce tutto un secolo di polemica laica, da Bayle a Voltaire. Non saprei farle complimento migliore. (Così scriverà Massimo Mila dopo l’interpretazione della Gencer de la Vestale di Spontini a Torino).
Oggi, finalmente, con questo « long-playing » Leyla, dopo le sue « piratesche » fortune, entra ufficialmente in quella discografia ufficiale che, ora distratta, ora disinformata, ora fagocitata da «feudi» vessatori e incrollabili, l'aveva, fino ad ora ignorata. A _solennizzare l'avvenimento ha voluto offrire il suo personale e quanto mai prestigioso contributo un grande diretto re quale Gianandrea Gavazzeni che dei meriti non comuni della cantante fu uno dei primi, più tenaci e convinti assertori e che, insieme, fu l'iniziatore di quella « Donizetti Renaissance » alla quale la Gencer ha dato un impulso ed una marcatura impagabili. Nel realizzare questo « Omaggio a Leyla Gencer ». abbiamo voluto — riteniamo, opportunamente — contrapporre le « due facce » della grande cantante, i due differenti momenti che contraddistinguono il « soprano » di ieri dalla « Primadonna » di oggi affiancando alle interpretazioni donizettiane realizzate oggi nei nostri studi, alcune, ormai storiche, registrazioni effettuate una quindicina di anni fa dalla Gencer sotto la direzione del tompianto Arturo Basile. Ascoltando i provini di questo « longplaying » le reazioni di Leyla sono tipicamente « genceriane »... « Dio come cantavo bene, me ne ero quasi dimenticata!... sì, ma mi piaccio più adesso! »...
Ho motivo di supporre che anche i più tenaci — anche se non sempre coerenti — sostenitori di una certa imperturbabile etica professionale non si sorprenderanno del carattere volutamente « agiografico » di queste mie note, né vorranno ascrivere ad eccessiva complicità promozionale l'omaggio sincero di un ammiratore convinto e di un grande amico ad una cantante alla quale l’incalzare degli eventi ha attribuito una funzione « storìca », ad un « personaggio » dolce e implacabile, mansueto e ossessivo: una pastora-sultana egocentrica e generosa; colta, sorniona e civilissima, sofisticate e dotata di tanta autocritica quanto basta a manovrare, dosare, o esasperare il « gencerismo » a seconda delle circostanze, delle necessità, delle condizioni ambientali. Sulla scena, come nella vita.
FROM LP BOOKLET
From that ineffable combination of « terrestrial paradise » and « anthropological Grand Guignol », better known as the « opera world », emerge a few symptomatic patterns, more in view and clamorous than usual, that summarize one of the lovely psychosomatic conformations always Characteristic of a «species» that only the most apathetic and least imaginative would consider on its way to extinction. For two copious centuries the zenith of this ipomoeatic species has been dominated by the idolized, degraded, indestructible prima donna. Prima donna. The expression itself is no longer «slangishly » popular but in the last twenty years it has managed to reconquer the opulent sovereignty of its more important moments of splendour (the mythical early 19th century of Giuditta Pasta and Maria Malibran). The obligatory referral to Maria Callas is by now so completely worn out and consumed that one is forced to pronounce her name as history complete with all the after effects. This is not the case with Antonio Gualerzi who, in order to sketch the most evident changes in female vocalization, released an unedited but explicit calendar that began with the year one A.C. (after Callas). For us « brothers in Callas » such a calendar could easily oust the Gregorian, Julian and Masonic if our extremism were destined to obtain a still larger number of followers among persons deprived of common sense and abounding in unrestrained imagination. In this way, we could officially and legally declare a whole series of holidays and anniversaries that could run from the birth dates of Sutherland and Caballé to the debut dates of Horne and Verrett, ending with the arrival of the personality we _are preparing to celebrate: « Our Lady of the Turks », known by all, idolized, discussed, loved, hated, hosannized, neglected and known by the named of Leyla Gencer.
Even if more than often superfluous, a brief biography is obligatory. Born in Istanbul to one of the most antique, nobel Turkish families (the bizarre commandingness and Catholic prejudices transplanted here by her Polish mother), Leyla Gencer revealed from childhood a strong predisposition toward artistic ideals and ambitions. She longed to become a great prose actress, a famous ballerina, an archaeologist, a celebrated writer. It was only later that she geared her ambitions toward voice and the resulting assiduous and invaluable voice lessons given by the unforgettable Giannina Arangi Lombardi at The State Theatre in Ankara, the city where she had her first contact with the stage, singing in the chorus of that theatre. During this epoch it was still reasonable for a young and ambitious singer to visualize Italy as the ideal place to launch a career.
When she finished her studies in 1954, Leyla sailed for Italy, landing in Naples. After a brief audition at San Carlo. she «conquered » Pasquale di Costanzo and was engaged for some summer recitals of Cavalleria Rusticana. But a contract was already ready for San Carlo’s upcoming season. The operas selected: Madame Butterfly and Eugenio Oneghin. The occasion gave her the opportunity of working under Tullio Serafin, who, other than being a remarkable director, was one of the few enlightened and forerunning vocal experts of our time.
Serafin, as he had already done with Olivero and Callas and as he would do shortly with Sutherland, gave a definitive touch to Gencer’s vocal technique and he offered her the first indications of the maxim which would become the singer's specialization. In fact, in 1955 he offered her the role of Violetta at Palermo’s Massimo. Then two years. later at the Fenice he chose her for the role of Contarini in I Due Foscari. In the meantime, Leyla’s activities intensified. Sha sang La Traviata in numerous European theatres (even at the Vienna Opera with Karajan), encounted her first television experience (Werther in 1955 and Trovatore in 1957) and made her debut in the United States (Traviata and Lucia in San Francisco, Turandot in Los Angeles).
Then came her first contact with the Scala. In 1957 Antonino Votto entrusted her with the role of Leonora, noted for its typical Scala complexities, in an edition of La Forza del Destino presented in Cologne while a few months before, she had taken on a not particularly demanding role in Poulenc’s Dialoghi delle Carmelitane (a probing operation typical of Scala proverbial caution).
Not even her second experience at the Scala (Assassinio nella Cattedrale by Pizzetti) was destined to offer her the resolutive chance. Her «chance» came not long after with the role of Margherita in Mefistofele. In July of 1958 her first encounter with those Donizettian « queens » would subsequently indissolubly make her name and her fame, allowing her to take the leap from « soprano to prima donna » (a difference scientifically irrational and unprovable, but equally psychologically clear and substantial).
The merit for this first hint of « mutation » goes to Gianandrea Gavazzeni who chose her as protagonist for a radiophonic edition of Anna Bolena, giving her for the first time the right to succession — still theoretical — to the throne on which Maria Callas still perched.
Gencer’s career proceeded rapidly, always more enriched with remarkable affirmations. Consequently, her repertoire enlarged in all directions, confirming an exceptional vocal ductility and a realm of rich psychological intuitions. With Lucia and Amina, Gilda and Manon, Elvira and Butterfly, she alternates. the most volatile and intense Verdian heroines in a gallery of personalities that also embrace Mozartian repertoires and Russian and contemporary operas.
The 1960-61 season brought Leyla to the centre of two events which were destined to give a definite turn to her career. In December of 1960 she victoriously succeeded Maria Callas in Poliuio’s long runs at the Scala, The following summer she was selected by Gianandrea Gavazzenifor an exceptional edition of Simon Boccanegra at the Salzburg Festival. In 1962 she confronted for the first time the role of Norma and successively enriched her repertoire by two roles destined to prepare the advent of what we would call « Gencer’s second way »: Elena in « Jerusalem » and the Bellini’s «Beatrice di Tenda ».
By now everything was ready. From predestination’s meticulousness to the happening that was to make Leyla Gencer the centre of attention for critics, musicologists, men of culture and for that vast sector of the public who, after the inevitable decline of the Callas parabola, were waiting with an almost morbose sense of expectation for the rush of a new force and life that would break the egg’s sterility, the predictability and monotony of an efficient, dignified, disarming routine. Someone who would know how to renew enthusiasm, polemics, unconditional devotion and the consequential reactions of a chain of rejections lurking at the centre of the precious paraphernalia of idealism, irrationality and- contradiction which the operatic ritual cannot do without unless at the cost of self-destruction transforming itself into a squalid « assembly line » for an amphibious and insipid product destined to appear anachronistic and superfluous the more it attempts to affirm sobriety and stability, and an equivocal functionality which the constructional components of the ritual itself categorically refuse. But let us return to the « historical » event where Gencer’s career takes a new turn. Naples, Teatro San Carlo. 2 May 1964: Roberto Devereux's first 20th century revival of Gaetano Donizetti. The Gencer operation clicked and simultaneously, after the glorious Bolena parenthesis, she officially initiated « Donizetti's Renaissance». The brilliant vocal versatility and the strong interpretive temperature of Leyla Gencer seemed to have found in the regal grandeur of the Donizettian heroines their most natural and congenial destination. Lucrezia Borgia, Maria Stuarda, Belisario and Caterina Cornaro return to the centre of the stage after a long forgetfulness by (as Gavazzeni underlined) « lazy popular places » and inevitable tributes to a critical. time destined to the contradictions that historical repetition makes evident.
Leyla is the inspirator and ideal interpreter of these precious lost treasures, the creator of an ingenious and anti-conformist style, of a solid and personal dramatic frame to which one is inevitably attracted — even with the contributions of different local conformations and organizations diffused throughout the world — this repertoire rediscovered in a critical renewed climate that boldlessly left behind the sumlaries, the intransigencies, the dogmas of badly programmed computers. that in their in animated calculations on « beauty » and « ugliness » had short circuited.
In the name of Donizetti, his merits were configured. to the highest degree and Leyla Gencer's quotations grew and were stabilized. Other fortunate explorations at the turn of the 19th century in Italy (Pacini’s Saffo, Cherubini’s Medea, Spontini's La Vestale and Rossini’s Elisabetta d’Inghilterra) include a gentile interpretation of Gluck’s Alceste staged in Maggio Fiorentino in1966 contributed to the singer’s fame and « professionals » and enlightened « dilettantes » new arguments.
At this point it would be opportune to ask what basically are the components of Leyla’s late but shining fortune, of the enormous following she enjoys all over the world, of the indicative fact that her name immediately follows Callas’s on the highest index for the « black recording market » which has become diffused all over the world and which official record companies systematically continue to ignore (it is paradoxical but honest to mention this here on the occasion of the release of the singer’s « official » long-playing album). Nor would it be superfluous to ask for what strange reason a singer who toiled diligently for fame while her voice was fresh, integral and true to all the phonational orthodoxies, all of a sudden leap to notoriety the moment in-which she « invents », « constructs », a voice and a personality totally different from the Original. The answer lies in the radical finding of ‘superior intelligence, the natural predisposition to irony, the self-observation of the singer who individualized with cunning exactness, exploiting to her advantage the pathological and cultural instances of a determined moment, of a mature disposition on the part of the public to bear the most intense of emotions of diligent and scholastic performances. The singer imposes on her audiences that tactic of « take it or leave it». The typical Callas chant, « Adore me or detest me... but-don’t ignore me ».
As a consequence, she leaves the circle of commercial music and productions to dedicate her activities exclusively to the precious task of uncovering the forgotten 19th centuries repertoires. A task that, other than its specific cultural weight, offers great advantages: the guarantee of high-level collaborators (directors, conductors, scenographers) and contact with a public who is predisposed to grasp the precious sense of the singer's presence in an operatic panorama, at least on national grounds, almost totally deprived of sex appeal. The results of this operation are nearly perfected and confirm all of the characteristics of a methodology scrupulously nurtured that it serves as an affirmation of « the triumph of spirit over matter ».
The critic and the viewer are categorically deprived of their prerogative (many times drilled in with obstinate extremism and the total absence of imagination) to proceed to an analysis of the particular; and become involved from the flow of the interpretative vocal event on which nothing can be pronounced that with a total and summarized valuation so as not to run the risk of discovering disarming intuitive deficiencies. The predisposition to regalty, the ancestral predestination of a dramatic event, the peremptory relish of the invective, the confluence of emotional contradictions and of intimate existential macerations uniting a sense of gold classicality to the painful. poetic participation of mystical contemplative abandonments — have a definite weight on the configuration of a singer-actress (which is the natural effect of Gencer’s « second way » as Mario Messinis intuited, « to recover a practical melodramatic vocal and at the same time to puncture the formal chrysalis, involving her in a devouring expressive tension.». And it is here that Leyla Gencer's secret weapon is hidden: a constant expressive tension that, if on one hand it authorizes her to make bold proclamations of independence regarding certain popular phonation rules, on the other hand she is always «in tune » to a rigid philological faith to the style and poetics at the base of the musical page. Theatrical rules of contrast always are exalted in the most enlightened manner. The calculated detachment, the able tricks, the skill to transform into an irresistible « effect » even the inevitable flaws contribute to make always more significant and Chiaroscurist the phrasing, always more lashing the « cabaletta » (never subtle like floral grace notes but like a developed and psychological cadence of a certain formal and expressive situation).
To which she opposes the inestimable purity, the uncorrupted neatness, the persuasive sweetness of the « connected » song at half voice and the prodigious resources of a technician that allow her to confront all of the plot difficulties, to domesticate to her tastes and means with a musical infallibility that does not let her improper stylistic diversions succeed the limits of a penetrating second reading, of a re-proposal that accents, with modern sensitivity, Elizabethan tragedies and expressionism that constitutes the most pregnant force, the most curious and unexplored characteristic of the 19th century dramatist in Italy. In the same direction she configures and develops the essential and equally polarizing scenic game of the actress... « She steals the scene in her own way — with a daring stare or attitude, her arms often raised in a threatening gesture or meekly rested on her breast. But one could not say that she possesses entirely the flair for great tragic art but rather a personal idea of what tragedy is. And from the distressed frown, from the resentment with which she challenges the « divinita infernal », to the end of the first act, one would say that a whole century of laymen's polemics from Bayle to Voltaire run through that aria. 1! Would not know of a greater compliment ». (Massimo Mila wrote this after Gencer’s interpretation of Spontini’s La Vestale at Turin).
Finally, today, with this long-playing album, Leyla after a long, slow climb to fame has officially entered the world of official recording which she had up until now ignored because of oppressive feuds, misinformation and her own personal distractions. To solemnize the event a great director, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, wanted to offer his personal and prestigious contribution — the person who, of merits not common to the singer, was one of the first, most tenacious and convinced champions of « Donizetti's Renaissance » where Gencer gave an impulse and an invaluable mark. In actualizing this « Homage to Leyla Gencer » we wanted to take the opportunity to contrast the « two faces » of the great singer, the-two different moments which distinguish the « soprano » of yesterday from the « Primadonna » of today placing alongside one another the Donizettian tapes of today made in our studio and those recorded 15 years ago with Gencer under the direction of the late Arturo Basile. Listening to these recording sessions Leyla’s reactions are typically Gencerian, « God, how! sang well. I'd almost forgotten!... yes, but I like myself more now!»
I have reason to believe that even the most tenacious supporters, even if they're not up to date, of a certain unperturbable professional ethic will not be surprised at the intentional « agiographic » tone of my note, nor will they want to register themselves for an excessive promotional sincere homage of a convinced admirer of a great friend and a singer to whom the pressing of events has attributed a «historical » function; to a sweet and implacable « personality » — meek and obsessing: a Sultan shepherd egocentric and generous; cultured, mischievous and civil, sophisticated and gifted with a self-criticism that Is enough to let her manoeuvre, distribute or exasperate the « Gencerism » depending on the circumstances; the necessities and — the environmental conditions. On stage, as in life.
Cuando esta soprano turca estuvo por primera vez en el Colón, en 1961, para cantar las protagonistas de "Rigoletto" e "I Puritani", tenía 33 años y ya era una de las más grandes sopranos lírico-dramáticas de entonces. Especializada en el bel canto, su temperamento le permitía afrontar papeles sin muchas alternativas, salvo Callas. Una gran lucidez interpretativa la exhibía siempre dentro del estilo, su musicalidad le daba fenomenal llegada al público y su impecable dicción italiana la inmunizaba contra las críticas de los fanáticos peninsulares. A pesar de todas estas cualidades, no disponía de un marketing adecuado ni de un sello discográfico que la apoyara, por lo que la mayor parte de sus grabaciones eran piratas.
Los registros de este reciente (y legal) CD contienen arias de "Caterina Cornaro", "Roberto Devereux" y "Maria Stuarda", de Donizetti; "Il trovatore", "Aida" y "La traviata", de Verdi. y "La Wally", de Catalani. Fueron grabadas en su período de plenitud (1956) y antes de su retiro, en 1974. Y la muestran tan esplendorosa como la recuerdan los argentinos, después de su segunda y última visita, en 1964.
1974.07.10
- 15 Leyla Gencer [Studio MC]
RAI
Symphony Orchestra, Turin
Gianandrea Gavazzeni conductor
Leyla Gencer soprano
Donizetti Torna all'ospite tetto...Vieni o tu,
che ognor io chiamo Caterina Cornaro
Donizetti E Sara... in questi orribili momenti...quel sangue
versato Roberto Devereux
Donizetti O nube che lieve per l'aria Maria Stuarda
Donizetti Com’é bello Lucrezia Borgia
Cancela Tape – 1 MC
Leyla
Gencer soprano
Edoardo Müller piano
Schumann Frauenliebe und Leben
Seit ich ihn gesehen
Er, der Herrlichste von allen
Süsser Freund, du blickest
Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan
Chopin Piesni (Canzoni polacche, op.74)
Zycenie
Bellini
Il fervido desidero
Dolente immagine di Fille mia
Vaga luna, che inangenti
Ma rendi pur contento
Donizetti
Amo, si, ma l’amor mio
La corrispondenza amorosa
A mezzanotte
La mère et l’enfant
Liszt Tre Sonetti di Petrarca
Benedetto sia il giorno, e ‘l mese, e l’anno
Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra
I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi
Opera
Depot – 1 CD
Leyla
Gencer soprano
Edoardo Müller piano
Schumann
Frauenliebe und Leben
Seit ich ihn gesehen
Er, der Herrlichste von allen
Süsser Freund, du blickest
Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan
Chopin Piesni (Canzoni polacche, op.74)
Bellini
Il fervido desidero
Dolente immagine di Fille mia
Vaga luna, che inangenti
Ma rendi pur contento
Donizetti
Amo, si, ma l’amor mio
La corrispondenza amorosa
A mezzanotte
La mère et l’enfant
Liszt Tre Sonetti di Petrarca
Benedetto sia il giorno, e ‘l mese, e l’anno
Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra
I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi
Opera
Depot – 1 CD
Leyla Gencer soprano
Marcello Guerrini piano
VOL.III (1975)
Chopin
19 Canzoni polacche, op.74
No.1 Zyczenie (The Wish)
No.19 Dumka (Reverie)
Bellini
Tre ariette
Il fervido desiderio
Dolente immagine
Vaga luna
Donizetti
La mère et l’enfant
La corrispondenza amorosa
A mezzanotte
Rossini
Cetra – 1 LP
Leyla Gencer soprano
Marcello Guerrini piano
VOL.VII (1976)
Schumann Frauenliebe
und Leben, Op.42
Seit ich ihn gesehen (Since I saw him)
Er, der Herrlichste von allen (He, the noblest of all)
Ich kann's nicht fassen, nicht glauben (I cannot grasp or believe it)
Du Ring an meinem Finger (You ring upon my finger)
Helft mir, ihr Schwestern (Help me, sisters)
Süßer Freund, du blickest mich verwundert an (Sweet friend, you gaze)
An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust (At my heart, at my breast)
Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan (Now you have caused me pain for
the first time)
Liszt Tre Sonetti di Petrarca
Cetra – 1 LP
L’Inclusione di questo “recital” di arie da camera interpretate da Leyla Gencer in un “collona di carattere squisitamente operistico non dovrebbe smuovere soverchie perplessita. Il dirottamento non e destinato ad apparire ederodosso a quella stragrande maggioranza – alla quale destiniamo le nostre iniziative discografiche – che, gia da tempo, sollecita da tutta una serie di fortunate concomitanze, ha “civilizzato” il proprio gusto, affinato le preprie esperienze, allargato i propri orizzonti sulle sconfinate possibilita di espansione dell’aıtentico “bel canto” e, sopratutto, ha individuato, una preziosa intercomunicabilita fra la maestosa complessita di un presonaggio melodramatico e quella di conquistare, in forza di speriore intuizione, differenti mondi poetici, addomesticando la propria organizzazione vocale a dimensioni piu intime e raccolte nell’esercizio di quell’arte “liederistica” che, in ogni tempo, fu la conquista definitiva dell’artista autentico mai pago delle mete raggiunte.
Se quarant’anni fa Elisabeth Rethberg – una delle piu grandi cantanti tiriche del nostro secolo – aveva in repertorio oltre mille “lieder”, oggi tutte le cantanti predestinate a glorificare il nostro tempo alternano all’opera il concerto e, non piu come attivita periferica destinata a ristrette “elites” ma rivolgendosi direttimente al grande pubblico della Scala e degli Champs Elisée, della Royal Albert Hall e della Carnegie Hal; ad un pubblico, insomma, che nell’esercizio della propria passione, ha superato le barriere di inaccettabili "compartimenti stagni”, ha individuato il senso di continuita, i sotterranei e tenacissimi legami, che uniscono il vocalismo melodrammatico alle fugaci pennelate, al rapidi ma concisi trasalimenti, ai mistici abbandoni, alle civetterie graziose, ,n punta di penna, del “lied” e dell’aria da camera; una continuita indissolubile che ha come comune denominatore la conquista di quella che Eugenio Gara defini l’essanza misteriosa del canto, quella “sonorita psicologica” che e poi la ragione meno labile del suo fascino. Fu uno dei maggiori tenori del primo ottocento, Gilbert Duprez, a dire...: “Enfin, qu’est-ce gu’un son, sinon un moyen d!exprimer une pensée? Qu’est-ce qu’une note, sans le sentiment qu’elle colore e dont elle animée ? “. E, tutto cio, si addice a meraviglia all’arte ed all’intelligenza; all’unimata ed alla civilta di un’artista completa.
FROM LP BOOKLET
In questo disco Leyla Gencer legge Chamisso e Schumann, Petrarca e Liszt. E’ un incontro aperto e senza reticenze, un fatto culturale restituito alla sua primitiva e primordiale autenticita, un avventimento personale che si comunica agli altri per quello che e, senza schermi, vero.
Ci sono molti altri modi di cantare i lieder: quello sfiorante dell’artista che misura le possibilita della sua voce a proposito delle melodie che gli autori le offrono; quello furbo delle cantanti che sanno ormai quali siano i punti chiave dove accentuare gli effetti – tilati, rallentandi, sillabe dalle consonanti accentuate, piccole code di suono... – per convincere ed inarettenere; quello elagantissimi e sapiente della liederista nata che avvolge tutto nella nobile stera dello stile inteso come accttivante civilta...
Il modo di cantare i lieder di Leyla Gencer e il suo: penetrare il piu possibile la parola, la trase musicale, le ragioni dello stile inteso come linguaggio dell’autore nelle singole pagine, le componenti stroriche della cultura e dell’invenzione, le regole voclai dell’epoca, ma pioi lasciare liberamente rivivere l’incontro con il poeta ed il musicista; e verrebbe de dire col poeta attraverso il musicista, qui, il Petrarca-Liszt; e con il musicista attraverso il poeta, qui, in Chamisso-Schumann.
In “Amore e vita di donna”, infatti, ciclo stupendo di lieder scritti nel 1840, della grazia intima delle frasi letterarie e del piccolo intense mondo della vita d’amore in comune fatta di cose quotidiane fino alla morte di lui ed al rimpianto doloroso di lei rimasta sola, ie voce della Gencer non cerca affatto di rivelare l’incantevole equilibro e il peso nativo delle singole parole; se ne serve come situazioni drammatiche, in cui sentire tutt’insieme la gioia e l’angoschia, il trasalimento della felicita perduta e la nostalgia della tenerezza che si la contemplazione, con una tragicita scura senza accentuazioni. E cioe tutta della parte di Schumann, che sente sulla gioia l’ala della morte e nella poesia delicate e penetrante dello scrittore romantico da poco morto (Albert von Chamisso visse infanti dal 1781 al 1838) l’aprisi di spazi verso un sentire universale, che era ancora il grande vagheggiamento del primo Ottocento, dell’eta eroica del romanticismo nascente, ma che nasce dall’affiato musicale di Schumann, artista tenero, inquieto e accorato. A questo mondo di Schumann Leyla Gencer conferisce l’aspetto d’un soliloquio, o quasi d’un monologo non teatrale ma che della teatralita ha una caratteristica, la corenza unitaria della psşcologia. C’e cioe il personaggio di questa donna; da qui, deriva la varieta del traseggio, la cura del colore vocale che e piano, e inconfondibile, l’abbandono scoperto a slanci e la presenza forte che si sente persino nelle pause (compreso il finale, dove suona soltanto il pianoforte, nel richiamo del tema della prima feticita, e dove e impossibile non immaginare l’interprete della donna in piedi silenziosa ad ascoltare), per una perentoria presa di possesso dell’intero arco musicale; una cantata, insomma, con con un personaggio d’eroina romatica, nel suo mondo interiore segreto. E da qui, anche, l’accento personale ed indimenticabile di certe frasi, come “brich, o Herz, was liegt daren?” (II), “... dein Bildnis!” (VI), “Das Glück ist die Liebe, die Lieb’ist das Glück” (VII) e „Galiebet hab’ich und gelebt“ (VIII).
Nei sonetti del Petrarca, musicati da Liszt circa un anno prima (1938-39) ma rifatti ne 1883 (ed e emozionante il fatto che sono i primi lieder di Liszt nella prima versione, e gli ultimi nella seconda), il musicista e invece assecondato nel suo muovere il mondo sonora e la sua abilita straordinaria nel suo compositore alla ricerca d’una recitazione cantata del desto poetisco; e l’accento espressivo grava tutto parola in se stressa.
Da quella prima autorevole “entrata”, “Pace non trovo e non ho da far guesrra”, fino alle contemplative espressioni che chiudono il terzo sonetto, Leyla Gencer compie una vera “lettura” di Petrarca, analitica quanto invece era tutta d’immedesimazione in Schumann, e attenta a quelle stupefacenti e mistoriose consonanze dell’universo, che sono insieme l’alta qualita dell’artificio e la profonda autentica personale del grande poeta del Trecento italiano. Qui la vocalita e piu scaltra, cioe piu ricca di effetti, e insieme pero meno accurata, quasi che non volesse cadere nel pericolo d’un’esibizione tecnica applicata ad un esercizio intelletuale, e quindi sempre molto immediata e spontanea nel rispondere alle variatissime sollecitazione musicali.
Alla fine, restano quasi piu le parole del Petrarca, dunque, che non la musica di Liszt, il quale d‘altra parte era cosi desideroso di servire la recitazione del testo, da affrontare nella sua vita ben cinque volte il melologo, cioe la recitazione accompagnata della musica (nel suo caso, dal pianoforte); e qui soprattuto si preoccupoa di offrire, attorno ad una specie di lungo recitativo con accensioni melodiche de canto, l’aprirsi di continui sfondi sonori ecocato anche come frasi autonome strumentali. Queste parti hanno in questo disco eccellente rilievo, per la qualita di prim’ordine del tocco del pianista, Marcello Guerrini, il quale ha anche la rara virtu di riuscire nell’espressivita insieme eloquente e prodico.
Da queste letture personali d’una grande interprete, esce un!immagine interessante e vivida dell’Ottocento europeo, un contributo critico avviencente proprio perché non astratto, e poco meno d’un’ora di confortante esperienza d’ascolto, da ripetersi quante volte si voglia: perché, a quanto mi pare, questo e un disco a cui ci si sffeziona.
1976.11.12
Trieste Recital [Live CD]
Leyla
Gencer soprano
Edoardo Müller piano
Fauré 4 Mélodies
Après un rêve
La promessa
Opera
Depot – 1 CD
Leyla
Gencer soprano
Walter Baracchi piano
Bartok Hùsz magyar népdal
A Tömlöchen - Pásztornóta - Székely “Lassù”
Székely “Friss” - Juhàszcsúfoló
Pàrosito II - Panaze
Hej, édes anyám kedves
Érik a ropogós cseresznye
Már Dobonzon Régen - Sárga ku koricaszál
Buza, buza, buza - Erdö, erdö, erdö
Liszt Tre Sonetti di Petrarca
Benedetto sia il giorno, e ‘l mese, e l’anno
Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra
I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi
Donizetti Vivi, ingrato............ Roberto Devereux
Bellini Ah non credea mirarti La sonnambula
Donizetti Ici ta main glacée Les Martyrs
Myto
– 1 CD
Alfred Cortot crossed Leyla Gencer's path as a lieder singer; he accompanied the young soprano in melodies by Fauré, Duparc, and Debussy at the home of the director of Ankara Conservatory. Cortot exhorted her to persevere in her choice to sing. She had studied those precious lyrics at the Istanbul Conservatory with a French teacher and her relish for phrasing (stolen from her solfeggio teacher, the violoncello player Muhiddin Sadak) along with her fantasy as a curious reader of everything, had already made her into an interesting performer back then. Then Georg Reinwald came to the theatre of Ankara to teach her the rigors of German Lieder and a few other composers.
Opera however, prevailed with its grand heroines and grand theatres, the historical rediscoveries of Leyla Gencer’s career. In the 1970's her desire to perform chamber music emerged once more with the aid of director and pianist friends, especially Dino Ciani. Intellectual curiosity and flexibility made her a partner in great demand for special projects. She sang Chopin with Magaloff, as well as Beethoven and Liszt in Strehler’s “Faust” (1987), cycles of queens, sorceress and turquoiseries for the Venetian Carnival. She evoked the decadent creatures of Poulenc and Louise de Villemorin in the "Cocteau” Ballet with Fracci and Menegatti (1989).
Claudio Abbado asked her to sing a concert for the Liszt-Bartok Cycle at the Scala in 1978, and recommended the pianist Walter Baracchi. The singer chose a panorama of popular from the 1929 “Husz Magyar népdal” collection (Twenty Popular Hungarian Songs) by Bela Bartok (1881-1945) who rediscovered peasant songs of his country. The composer found authenticity in antique ecclesiastical and Greek modes, and more primitive scales uncontaminated by 19th century tradition or the minor keys, making that authenticity the root of his lyrical voice swoops down into Bartok’s spare prose and emanates secret vitality; it becomes the rhythmic pulsation of dance, a rustling of syllables and strange intervals, phonemes, the colour of images and repeated seasonal rites, an outburst of simple affection.
There are two “Sad songs,” the story of the woman "ln prison” uncoils, humbled by the spoken section (Lento, parlando). Her mobility of tempos continually changes in an uninterrupted course from pain to anxiety (Poco agitato; Agitato) to the hope for freedom to die (rallentando... al Molto tranquillo). Her pianos and pianissimos range down to the final decrescendo held and stretched out at the end. The “Pastoral Song” is coloured with elegy (Andante, parlando): green pastures, falling asleep in the grass near the herd, awaking at night and not finding the cattle any more.
Two "Songs for Dancing” contain the majestic “Slow Transylvanian Dance” which chains the dancer to his loved who does not, alas, belong to him. There is the cheerful “Fast Transylvanian Dance,” with aquavit that adds merriment and exorcises the devil and the grumpy old neighbour woman.
Four “Mixed Songs” begin with the shepherd’s melody (Andante) that protects the sheep from the wolf, its last verse fading off into a piano. Two wedding songs follow: the playful first one (Moderato scherzando) has the brilliant timber of cavalcade and the beckoning tableau of the betrothed. The second is a rapid nursery rhyme (Allegro), unleashed on a feast of frogs and allusions, sparkling with the performer’s innate comic flair. The gentle “Lament” (Andante) is sung for the loved one who suffers and the desire to share the pain.
The five "New Songs” form a continuous stream of rapid images from life in the country. A mother is invited to put her departing son's clothing away (Allegro); cherries are gathered for the beloved (Piu allegro). Snow falls in the Dobos (Moderato) and the loved one still has not come, perhaps his arm is wounded and he cannot embrace her. The lively rhyme (Allegretto) speaks of yellowing corn, dried out like young do not make love. The intense image of the field of wheat (Allegro non troppo) calls for solid accents, a somber rhythm and melancholy "Who will reap the wheat if I go to war? My dear, do not leave me.” Without a break, (Piu allegro) it leaves room for the image of woods in the wind and the song of birds. They will sing sweetly for the loved one. The prolonged note sung piano renews the melancholy of separation.
In Franz Liszt (1811-1886) song becomes the wing of poetry, even if the writing lies halfway between the melodic lied of early German Romanticism and a more theatrical one. The "Angiolin" lullaby, cradled with delicacy on an image, introduces us to that world. The “Three Sonnets by Petrarch” (composed in 1838-39, second version 1883) ascend to a zone of high poetry and fervour of the spirit. The composer isolates three different situations (Three Sonnets) of amorous passion-torment from Francesco Petrarch’s "Canzoniere" (1304-1374), and pushes us to contemplate ecstasy and feel pain almost to the point of losing life. Liszt identifies with this and unwinds verses in discursive ease: respecting the perfect, finished structure, he freely recreates it. He intones the precious and intense language of the greatest love poet of Italian lyrics and Liszt's romantic sensitivity makes the words more extreme and piercing. He guides them up on chaste writing and it bursts forth until it skims secret shadows or soars into the dizzying realm of the spirit of ecstasy and torments.
Gencer loves to speak of poetry with poet and writer friends such as Bacchelli, Gavazzeni or Contini, and brings her own noble awareness of words making them resound in the most aesthetic and ideal spirituality. She recounts the ecstatic meeting (“I” vidi in terra angelici costumi - I saw angelic raiment on the earth”), with a passage prescribed as “Molto lento and placido”, her “dolcissima” mezza-voce chisels words with their semantic pregnancy, and then she becomes as light as “dreams” or as dense as “pain.” Expressive tension spurs her on, embraces her passionately or loses itself in the ecstasy of the unspeakable.
The Sonnet of gratitude is a very genteel one once again (“Benedetto sia il giorno, e’l mese, e l’anno – Blessed be the day and month, and year”), though it pushes further and deeper to encompass contrasts (“E i sospiri, le lagrime e’l desio - And sighs and tears and desire”) as well as ideal exaltation. The singer unites the agility of virtuosity with the strength of tragic pathos.
The sonnet of the war of love is dramatic and classically dominated (“Pace non trovo, e non ho da far Guerra - l have no peace and l must not make war”). The performer restrains herself with the symmetrical structure of the initial verses until the vocal gesture erupts (“E tutto il mondo abbraccio - And l hug the whole world”). Then she melts the story into song with naturalness and confides suffering and the contradictions of love (“E non ho lingua e grido: e bramo di morir e chieggo aita - And I have no tongue and shout: I want to die and ask for help”).
This live performance brings back the ambiance of that evening at the Scala on April 16, 1978: the applause at the entrance of the beloved prima donna, the reception of the single pieces, the click of the door in a box that perhaps closes on pianissimos (that has not changed despite the restoration of 2004). It closes with the voluptuous encores of a prima donna who has sung the grand roles at the Scala since 1956. With coy charm, she offers three, awaited by her fans as classics. Queen Elizabeth’s aria (“Vivi, ingrato”) is sung from "Roberto Devereux", the opera that Gencer rediscovered in Naples in 1964 and gave a surge to the Donizetti renaissance; this is almost the anthem of Gencer fans. Amina’s final aria from Bellini’s “La Sonnambula”, is next; Leyla Gencer had performed it only at the San Carlo in Naples in March 1958 and again the following season. That rare pearl is preserved in this unique recording. Once again here is the last conquest of the pioneer of the Donizetti renaissance: Pauline's prayer on the tomb of her mother from “Les Martyrs", which she rediscovered in Bergamo’s Teatro Donizetti, 1975. The response is unbridled enthusiasm of the audience for a legend of the Scala.
THE GUARDIAN
"Leyla Gencer was the greatest Turkish opera singer of the 20th century and a singing actor of formidable power and individuality. Although she came from what she herself referred to as a ‘Muslim and oriental’ background, she had the good fortune, as a student in Istanbul, to study with the famous Italian dramatic soprano Giannina Arangi-Lombardi, so that when she went to Italy in 1953, she was thoroughly grounded in the traditions of Italian opera.
She made her début as Santuzza at the open-air summer festival in Naples in 1953, and remained a particular favorite with the Neapolitans. Her early successes were in verismo roles - Madama Butterfly, Tosca and Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini. By 1957 she had been engaged by La Scala where she created the role of the New Prioress in the world premiere of Poulenc's LES DIALOGUES DES CARMÉLITES, and shortly after sang the title role in LA TRAVIATA at the Vienna Staatsoper, under Herbert von Karajan.
Throughout her career, Gencer had a very wide repertoire, ranging from Monteverdi, Gluck and Mozart to Verdi, Ponchielli and Puccini. During her career she sang virtually every soprano role in Verdi's operas, but it was especially in the revival of bel-canto works by Bellini, Donizetti and Pacini that she made her mark. To some extent, Gencer shot to fame in the immediate aftermath of the end of Maria Callas's Italian career - Gencer followed Callas as Anna Bolena at La Scala, and in the role of Paolina in Donizetti's POLIUTO - the last new part Callas undertook. As Queen Elizabeth I of England, first in Donizetti's ROBERTO DEVEREUX, and then in Rossini's ELISABETTA, REGINA D'INGHILTERRA, Gencer preceded Montserrat Caballé and Beverly Sills, who later recorded the roles.
Gencer's voice was not a natural dramatic soprano - she sang all the coloratura roles, such as Lucia, Elvira (PURITANI), Amina and Gilda. The sound had a strange, Smokey quality which could - and quite often did - turn sour and detracted from the pleasure of her singing.
Although Gencer's career was mostly in Italy, she appeared in the United States where she made her début in San Francisco as Lucia in 1957, returning there, as well as to Chicago and Dallas. John Ardoin described her voice in a memorable LUCREZIA BORGIA in 1974, as ‘poignant, compelling’ and mentioned the ‘strange colours and deep pathos of her art’. In England she was heard at Glyndebourne as the Countess in FIGARO, and as Anna Bolena. At Covent Garden she was Donna Anna in Zeffirelli's 1962 production of DON GIOVANNI, then Elisabeth de Valois in DON CARLOS. Gencer's most memorable UK appearances were undoubtedly in the title role of Donizetti's MARIA STUARDA, at the Edinburgh Festival in 1969. The sparks that flew on stage in the confrontation - historically absurd but dramatically thrilling - when Gencer as Mary Stuart ripped off her glove and flung it in the face of Shirley Verrett as Elizabeth I at the words, ‘Vil bastarda’ will surely live in the memory of all who witnessed it.
As a recitalist Gencer also had a wide repertoire of 19th and early 20th-century songs. Some of her later appearances were in recital in Paris at the Athenée in the 1980s, when a young French public, who had never had the opportunity to see her on stage, proved receptive to her high-flown style and hailed her as the greatest living prima donna. Gencer had no career whatsoever as a recording artist, but many of her broadcasts from Italian radio have now been issued on disc and are a fine memorial to her voice and dramatic ability. Especially noteworthy are performances of Verdi's I DUE FOSCARI (under Serafin), Donizetti's BELISARIO (from Venice in 1970) and SIMON BOCCANEGRA, from the 1959 Salzburg Festival, in which she is partnered by Tito Gobbi.”
1980.06.29
Paris Recital [Live CD]
Leyla
Gencer soprano
Edoardo Müller piano
Chopin Piesni (Canzoni polacche, op.74)
Zyczenie
Bellini
Il fervido desiderio
Dolente immagine
Vaga luna
Donizetti
La Sultana
La corrispondenza amorosa
A mezzanotte
Rossini Soirées musicales: 8 ariette
La promessa
Donizetti Al dolce guidami castel natio Anna Bolena
Donizetti Vivi ingrato.. Quel sangue versato Roberto Devereux
Bellini Ah non credea mirarti La Sonnambula
Bongiovanni – 1 CD
The career of Leyla Gencer was so dramatic, vibrant and passionate that it took hold above all in the theatre, on stage, in costume. As a result, the “minor” genre of chamber music found itself somewhat neglected. Anyone who has sung Verdi more than any other soprano in the twentieth century, whose repertoire ranges from Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea to Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, who has impersonated both Donna Anna and Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Dan Giovanni, who has revived much of Donizetti’s unjustly forgotten works, but who has not ignored operas by Puccini, Cilea and Zandonai, may in fact be forgiven. Such a singer would indeed not have much time to also undertake those delightful “watercolours” which are the ariettas, canzonas and romanzas of the chamber and the salon, “painted” by the same masters of the grandiose frescos, Norma, Lucrezia Borgia and Macbeth. Yet, Leyla Gencer did just that in the last years of her career, with remarkable frequency and in numerous venues. In Paris, at the Théatre de l’Athénée on Monday, 20 October 1980, she presented a recital of music composed by her beloved Donizetti, Rossini, as well as the less common name of Chopin. The presence of this last work was due undoubtedly to the search for novelty characterized her singing, but it also provides a touch of Slavic and oriental exoticness which is to be expected in an artist born in the Turkish city of Istanbul.
From Chopin’s very limited non-pianistic output, here are four songs for voice and keyboard the characters and texts of which are quite distinct from one other. But this does not frighten the artistic sensibility of Leyla Gencer. In Il Desiderio, her voice is low and austere, perfectly suited to the music. In Il Baccanale, she unleashes a playful folk-like tone which borders on the distracted and the eccentric. Cadono le foglie step the tragic Russian invasion of Poland, and Gencer’s voice takes on nuances of gloom sagaciously drawn from her experiences with Verdi. Finally, in Il bel giovanotto, she returns to the folk element, confirming her versatility not least because of her excellent Polish pronunciation.
Bellini was present in Gencer’s repertoire in Beatrice di Tenda, unlike Callas and Caballé (both of whom, however, had sung Il Pirata, which Gencer had not), and especially in Norma, in keeping with her predilection for bel canto and her passion for neo-classical and Romantic music. Yet the chamber ariettas-few in number, precious, brief, exquisitely crafted and melodically ineffable-represent an entirely different kind of vocal music; limpid and linear, with just the right amount of embellishment, set in a central tessitura, often melancholic and at times brilliant. With her notoriously opaque and if she immediately emphasizes of “Dolente imagine”, she skilfully accentuates their vivacity. See, for example, the entire “Vaga luna” (here as elsewhere at a faster tempo than the indicated “Andante cantabile”), and in particular the crescendo-diminuendo (“conta I palpiti e I sospir”). She does not overindulge in pianos (see the beginning of “Quando verra quel di”), and the messa di voce called for shortly afterwards on “desia” and at the end of “mia” are limited to an efficacious smorzando. Her pronunciation is noteworthy, especially on the palatal “c” (“cencre”, “pace”) and “g” (“giuri”, “linguaggio”), and truly remarkable at repeated words, where her feeling for invention, phrasing, rallentando and rubato are the stuff of a great interpreter (her “E’ inestinguibile / l’antico ardor” is marvellous).
The singing of Gencer and the operas of Donizetti: this artistic relationship was a vivid episode in twentieth-century opera history from the mid-1950s to the end of the l970s. In terms of sheer quantity, Gencer’s record is rivalled only by that of Caballé (certainly not by Callas, who unfortunately played only Lucia di Lammermoor and Anna Bolena). It was thus foreseeable that Gencer should also frequent Donizetti’s chamber production, an immense and uneven reservoir of music (unlike the limited chamber production of Bellini) full of pleasant discoveries and rewards. Here then, from the Paris concert, is La sultana, an aria which tells a tale and thus might be called a ballad. Gencer, with her enormous operatic experience, has never had problems telling stories, acting out scenes, impersonating characters. In breathing life into this little Turkish tale, she very probably turned to her own origins, refreshing them with a healthy dose of humour. The piece begins with the phrase “La sedevam sull’erto verone” “Larghetto cantabile”, she energetically attacks the recitative, and then shines in the more pastoral and evocative passages (“e dal colle, lontano, lontano”). She concludes (after significant cuts in the score) with rarefied expressive sweetness as she sings “é piu bella del ciel”, respecting to the letter the “rallentando” indicated by Donizetti himself.
La corrispondenza amorosa, too, takes advantage of dynamic games skilfully executed by Gencer, but there are two expressive aspects worthy of mention. The first concerns accents, here more vigorous than is usual (in chamber music) thanks to the enunciation of the consonants. The second is the piano employed at the ritornello “Brulez! Brulez! Gages d’amour”, which does not stop after the first three notes (unaccompanied) but extends to the fourth. At this C (the dominant), Gencer avoids a sudden swell, thereby confirming her chosen sonority and gracing her interpretation with an insightful sense of measure (and, it may be said, of modesty). There is no questioning the brilliance of A mezzanotte, an arietta dedicated to the great tenor Giambattista Rubini. The work is neither comical, nor serious, nor semi-serious, nor buffo: it is merely gallant, witty, flirtatious, entirely woven around repeated notes and staccatos, with trochaic rhythms (a note plus half its value) and rests. Gencer, unaccustomed to comic opera, nonetheless immediately grasps fully the sense of the song, and she performs it whole-heartedly, murmuring, sighing, smiling, and recreating the authentic atmosphere of the salon.
Rossini is a different case. This serious dramaturge received the attentions of the great prima donnas of the twentieth century, though more in terms of quality and then of quantity. Callas impersonated only Armida, Sutherland only Semiramide, while Caballé performed Elisabetta regina d’Inghillterra and La donna del lago (as well as Semiramide and Gugliaume Tell). Gencer portrayed Matilde from Gugliaume Tell in Naples and in the title role of Elisabetta regina d’Inghilterra in Palermo, well prepared for this repertoire by her experiences with the earlier music of Rubini and Spontini. These ladies sang little or nothing from Rossini’s comic operas and their approach to his chamber works was also extremely limited. Yet the Soirées musicales, usually favoured by lyric or light sopranos, nonetheless also captured the interest of Leyla Gencer, a singer more at home with the great tragedies of Verdi (alongside those of Donizetti). La promessa is perhaps the moment in the concert of greatest vocal clarity, of greatest exactness in regard to the score. A minute chisel, so to speak, which sculpts in particular the liquid and translucent double appoggiaturas. Il rimprovero, appropriately named, is painted in a more serious shade. Indeed, Gencer attempts to smooth out all of the embellishments and passage-work. Yet her exclamation “crudel” seems almost addressed to the treacherous Pollione from Norma, and when she ends with a negation, her brief and imperious “no” is worthy of Antonina from Donizetti’s Belisario. The almost declamatory opening of La partenza is emphasized, but not at the expense of the arduous coloratura which follows, itself designed with a touch wholly reminiscent of bel canto. The frivolous sense of L’orgia which strikes one at first glance might seem unsuitable to Gencer’s expressive urgency, and she leaves off the long trill called for at the word “cantiam”. At the end, however, she intentionally imbues the arietta with a particular air of clumsiness, as if the character were actually swaying-indeed dancing and tottering-under the inebriating effects of Bacchus and Cupid. The La pastorella delle Alpi, too, exudes humour in Gencer’s interpretation, despite the occasional forte explosion (balanced by the occasional pianos response), where the ascending arpeggios and staccatos almost seem to issue forth from Olimpia in Les Contes d’Hoffmann. La gita in gondola is a barcarole, but it is more than that. Gencer fully proves this as she elides, lengthens and loosens the phrases in order to do justice to such a complex composition. Built upon a solid structure, this work is fundamentally more serious than comic (only the beginning employs the indicative form of the verb rather than the conjunctive: “the agile boat flies” rather than “may the agile boat fly”). La danza also seems foreign to Gencer’s expressive world, and yet it easily fits in, thanks not only to her arch-noted versatility and her intellective lucidity which is sorely lacking in sopranos gifted with perhaps more solid vocal fibre. Above all, it is her devilish tone of voice, folk-like, untidy, Dionysian, which marks the consonants and is ever on the alert, ever trembling with excitement but never foolishly aristocratic.
This chamber recital closes with two war horses and an operatic rarity- all pieces which belong to grand finales from the theatre. “Al dolce guidami” (Anna Bolena) is a mad scene which is here distilled with as much technical skill as expressive intensity. “Vivi ingrato” (Roberto Devereux) is a melody bathed in tears at least as is the successive cabaletta, “Quel sangue versato”. Swollen with fury and folly, of Gencer it receives the same depth of sentiment as the other aria (but also greater equilibrium of sound). “Ah non credea mirarti” La Sonnambula) is one of the most sublime melodies of the Italian Romantic period. Gencer confers upon it a mood of dark sorrow which is completely unknown by the majority of traditional performers.
1981.10.05
Paris Recital [Live]
Leyla
Gencer soprano
Vincenzo Scalera piano
Monteverdi La mia turca
Vivaldi Se cerca, se dice L’Olimpiade
Bongiovanni – 1 CD
Leyla Gencer’s Parisian recital of 1981 is really something from another time, mostly because of its wide program, ranging from Monteverdi to Bizet (and the reference to the famous From Monteverdi to the Beatles of Cathy Barberian is intentional and I hope it doesn’t sound odd, considering the extraordinary versatility characterizing these two protagonists in the history of vocality in our century.)
If we were speaking of a pianist, a program like this could be defined in the “style of Busoni”. ln the case of a singer, we cannot but refer to what the great primadonnas of the past usually proposed in their academies, with the obvious aim to give the audience a complete picture of their vocal and interpretative qualities. So, for instance, Giuseppina Strepponi would pass with great confidence from a singing di agilita to a dramatic one, from the semi-comic - if not totally comic - to the tragic repertoire. A kind of experience that today very few sopranos can afford. Undoubtedly Leyla Gencer is to be included in this narrow circle of elected, and what’s more, among the very first ones. There is no use in discussing about the timbric glamour of either voice, since the subject offers wide margins to personal appreciation. What really matters is the result, and as far as this Turkish soprano is concerned, the results are so exceptional to make history.
Thus, her wide repertoire testifies not only the technical and interpretative qualities of the most celebrated models of the past (qualities that may also be found in other sopranos belonging to that special “Olympus” we mentioned above), but above all it evidences a really uncommon, musical versatility and intellectual brilliance. And it is just thanks to her extraordinary intelligence that Ms. Gencer could give a contribution of fundamental and unquestionable importance to the Donizetti Renaissance and that she was also able to bring back characters like Medea, Norma, Lady Macbeth and many of Verdi’s heroines to their authentic nature of belcanto.
The program of this Parisian recital is oddly organized in different moments: each one with its own title, or better its own theme, highlighting a side of Leyla Gencer’s multiform personality, starting just from her native roots, always deeply felt by this great artist and recently strengthened thanks to the new “Leyla Gencer” contest for young operatic singers in Istanbul.
But the hidden threads connecting the different pieces of this recital are really well characterized, with selected rare pieces and very refined musical combinations (La Partenza, one by Beethoven and one by Rossini on the same text by Metastasio; an aria from Pacini’s Saffo on a text by Cammarano dated 1840, followed by Donizetti’s Cantata Saffo for soloist, choir and orchestra, dedicated to his wife, Virginia Vasselli; the Lamento e morte di Maria Stuarda by Carissimi in addition to the finale of the opera by Donizetti; an aria from Medea in Corinto by the Bavarian composer Mayr, teacher of Donizetti, dated 1813 and based on a text by Romani).
This recital offers countless vocal wonders, not last the whole, intact vocal means boasted by Mrs. Gencer, whose demanding career in 1981 had been lasting for over thirty years. Her control of the filature and the pianissimos is still perfect. How beautiful are Leyla Gencer’s pianissimos: those sounds made of nothing that made her famous, intangible sounds and yet so “present” in a concert hall or a theatre, a signature of a very personal, unique and unmistakable vocality. And her incisive interpretation is well known: impeccable stylistic control, very variegated phrasing, clear diction. In short, something from another time. From every point of view.
1982.04.27
- 28 Trieste Rai Recital [Live DVD]
SCUOLA
DELLE REGINE
Leyla Gencer soprano
Enno Silvestri piano
Arias and sceens from three Donizetti Queens
Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux
Opera Fanatic – 1 DVD
Leyla Gencer soprano
Nikita Magaloff piano
Chopin
19 canzoni polacche, op.74
No.1 Zyczenie (The Wish)
No.2 Wiosna (Spring)
No.3 Smutna rzeka (The Sad Stream)
No.4 Hulanka (Merrymaking)
No.5 Gdzie lubi (There were she loves)
No.6 Precz z moich oczu! (Out of my sight!)
No.7 Posel (The Envoy)
No.8 Sliczny chlopiec (Handsome lad)
No.9 Melodya (Melody)
No.10 Wojak (The Warrior)
No.11 Dumkas: Dwojaki koniec (The double end)
No.12 Moja pieszczotka (My darling)
No.13 Dumkas: Nie ma czego trzeba (There is no need)
No.14 Pierscien (The ring)
No.15 Narzeczony (The Bridegroom)
No.16 Piosnka litewska (Lithuanian Song)
No.17 Spiew grobowny (Hymn from the Tomb)
No.18 Czary (Charms)
No.19 Dumka (Reverie)
Arkadia
– 1 CD
Gencer has an unusual timbre, dark and low; her way of phrasing is often haunting. She doesn't have total security, particularly in the upper range. But I enjoyed what she did with these charming songs, which ought to be better known. Magaloff works well with her, although I find his style dry. In the transcriptions, in addition to that same dry quality, he exhibits a technique that's not all-encompassing. The reproduction is O.K. My recommendation for these remains the Erato disc by Zylis-Gara and Czerny-Stefanska.
FROM CD BOOKLET
Frédéric Chopin also wrote songs. They are not Lieder with carefully planned musical and literary ductus in search of synthesis; but real songs, born of the memory of things already existing, Chopin’s spontaneous and natural tribute to the romantic myth, something quite apart from the drive to artistic production. They are out bursting of an enchanted or prophetic lyrical moment, fixed with burning immediacy as in the song Mr Poland “Falling Leaves" (N° 17, written on hearing the news of the fall of Warsaw on 7th September 1831, under General Paskiewicz’s armies), or found with sudden enthusiasm on a poetic model and then reworked in subsequent versions. Thus Desire (N° 1), written in 1829 for Costanza Gladkowska, a young Polish singer to whom Chopin lost his heart in Warsaw, later reworked in the summer of '36, together with others already composed in 1829-30 for Maria Wodzinska, the bride dreamed of by Chopin, but a scorching disappointment owing to the aristocratic family’s opposition.
They have the force of a message. A reference to the atmosphere of a particular evening, such as the leave-taking from friends on the eve departure from Warsaw in November 1830: a supper at Reinschmid’s, with songs, gaiety and the gift of a silver cup full of Polish earth to Frederic, so he should carry it throughout the world. Chopin, at the piano, composed “The Ulanka” (N° 4, after a poem by Witwicki, with a wild and forceful peasant mazurka rhythm, at once taken up by everybody in chorus.
They were destined to a circle of friends, to whom they were dedicated and donated and who spread them, often played by the author with improvisations and variations, distributed to pupils and acquaintances, quickly spreading beyond the occasion. We know that the first of them, dating from 1829, was already known in Warsaw in 1830 and was soon to be diffused in the concert halls by Liszt, through his virtuosity transcription. After 1831, in Paris, they became a reference point for the nostalgic patriotic understanding of the Polish exiles that had found refuge in the French capital; they were performed in the salons, where Chopin was surrounded by the best minds and artists of the time: Liszt and Madame d’Agoult, Balzac, Gautier, De Musset, George Sand, Légouvé, Delacroix, Sainte Beuve, Eugene Sue, Pierre Leroux, the pianists Moscheles, Kalkbrenner, Herz and Pixis, the violoncellist Franchomme, Heine and Ferdinand Hiller, Meverbeer, the tenor Nourrit and Pauline Viardot Garcia, the Polish poet friends Zalewski, Mickiewicz and Niemcewicz and the nobility in exile.
Chopin fascinated these various personages through the originality of his piano language, newly invented to his own measurement, together with a new rhetoric and syntax. “To him", Liszt said “we owe this extension of chords (...): the chromatic and harmonic windings, of which the Studies offer surprising examples, with the groups of overlapping notes that fall on the melodic figuration and variegate it like a dew, of which there was no other model but the embellishments of the old Italian school of singing (...) He invented the admirable harmonic progressions that give a sensation of weight even to pages which, owing to the levity of the subject, would not seem to warrant such importance…”.
He astounded than by the matchless virtuosity of his velvet fingers: “His playing ad libitum, which in other performers of his manic becomes a defect of time". Moscheles related in 1939 “is delightful originality in him. The hardness certain modulations, which I cannot I am playing them myself no when his fingers perform them, sliding delicately over. He uses the soft notes in such a way that he has no need to use any violent loud note in order to obtain the desired contrasts. The absence of the orchestral effects that the German school demands from a pianist is not noticed, but one is carried along as though by a singer who, without undue strictness for the accompaniment, gives way to his own feeling...”
He enchanted them with the extraordinary nature of his defenceless and mysterious personage, with diaphanous melancholies like absences, and feverish enthusiasms as in some of his writings. In the evenings when he took turns with Liszt at the piano, he might play in duet with Moscheles and above all play and improvise alone, and the rapture or emotion could verge on incandescence. In this atmosphere the Polish songs became a symbol of poignant distance or memory.
They had already been born as memories. To run through them is like a journey through Chopin’s youth. The artist who in Paris exhibited the abandonments and fragility of the ever-lasting child had been a boy with mature and very precocious perceptions. Everything that in the songs may seem linked to patterns of poetical or imaginative rhetoric has its root in real contact with his world, and this was a rural world and at the same time a world of urban intellectuality.
The roots lay at Zelozowa Wola, in the country at some 30 miles from Warsaw, where his father Nicola had arrived from the far distant Lorraine and become tutor in the house of the Counts Skarbek, and where Frédéric was born. When he was six months old, the family moved to Warsaw and his father became a grammar school teacher; but as a boy there were still the summers at Zelozowa Wola or Szafarnia, with the country lovingly discovered: the spaces, the peasant customs, the voices, the rural crop and harvest rituals, the heavy festive dances in the evening, and the sharp odour of alcohol mixed with gaiety: his joy in riding, or walking in the woods.
After going back there in 1830, the eve of his departure from Poland, he carried away the memory of the improvised open-air concerts, with the piano carried under the chestnuts and a throng of people all round, even coming from the nearby villages to hear the famous artist and wish him Godspeed. The penetrating scent of the earth in high summer already nearing its end and the foreboding (he suffered from forebodings) that he would never see it again. When Chopin set his poet friends’ poems to music, the thought goes beyond the inev1`table mannerism of certain sketches of romantic or popular fancy and discovers from life the joyful outspreading expansion of a pastoral opening, the melancholy without return of Dumka, the horse’s heroic or unbridled gallop, the lighting up or fading away of colours on the image or adjective touched.
Family and student life saw him grow up in an environment of students, scholars, musicians. poets and actors: a highly precocious pianist and author (at the age of eight years he published his first composition, a Polacca!) with an innate taste for theatrical improvisation and caricature, in company with his sisters he invented fantastic, unfettered stories for narrative “journals” about his holidays. He was an actor with an exceptional talent for mimicry in demand for student exhibitions, and complimented by professional actors. The same theatrical streak animates the little songs: he makes eyes in the courting of the "Handsome Lad"; he composes the Lithuanian Song in dense theatricality of gesture and dialogue between mother and girl, within a perspective of ancient childhood fable in the narrative approach. Or he suddenly illuminates the Mother’s face and words in the gloomy legend of the River. The young Chopin was enchanted by everything musical and theatrical, reached Warsaw and was fascinated by opera and singing, by Paganini’s virtuosity and by Enrichetta Sontag; he was a warmly welcomed attender on the Grand Duke Constantine and the nobility, but he was alert to patriotic ferments. the fascination of Maurizio Mochnacki, the soul of the coming revolution, and he was often at the Dziurka Café. head-quarters of the revolutionaries, where he met his young poet friends: Stephan Witwicki, Boldan Zaleski, Magnuzewski, Odyniec, and Goszczynski.
The poets were to remain his patriotic vehicle: Chopin vibrated for the revolution that was pre-paring, but accepted his destiny of going and making his music known in the world. He left Warsaw' on 2nd November 1830 and immediately, on 29th November, the fire is the old beer-house and the Grand Duke’s flight opened up hopes of revolution. From Vienna and Stuttgart friends’ letters became more frequent, the images gave epic farce to feelings: “If l could, I would call upon all the sounds that a blind, furious and unfettered feeling inspires in me in order to divine the songs sung by the army of King John (Sobieski): Oh God! She (Costanza) and my sisters can play their part at least with lint bandages and (to John Matuszynski, Vienna, 26 December 1830). “You are in arms then? Have you built bastions, dug trenches? And our poor parents? What are our friends doing? (...) Oh, why cannot I serve at least as a drummer?" (to the same, Vienna, 1st January 1831). These are almost the images, the broken and insistent syntax of the song for Poland, written on receiving the news of the fall of Warsaw, in which the strophic form of Vincent Pol’s words adumbrates a mazurka, and deliberately unfolds in tragic, obsessive declamation; it becomes interior anguish repeated with the lips, is born again in passionate revolt, and falls back into the melancholy of the close.
In this tragic phase of the fatherland the poets ask him to be their singer: “You must absolutely be the creator of Polish opera", Witwicki wrote to him in Stuttgart, “(…) Always keep in mind the fatherland alone, the fatherland and yet once more the fatherland". In Paris, in the environment of the Polish emigres, this insistence becomes urgent: even his old master Elsner wrote to him from Poland, and Chopin went as far as to talk to the poet Stanislao Kozmian about a subject drawn from Polish history, but he went no further. Even to the requests of the Polish bard Adam Mickiewicz Chopin replied' “Leave me to my piano, c'est mon affaire”. To his friend Delfina Potocka he confided the inmost sense of his own limitation:
As it is true that I love you, so it is true that I feel I am no John the Baptist of Polish music; I only want to write and leave it to those who come after to lay dawn foundations of what is really Polish, teaching the rejection of every false expression of the Polish character” The poets remained the live vehicle of his Polish authenticity: their presence and daily word passed into inspiration of the keyboard; their poems he was able to set to music and revive memories and images of youth. In his choices the same names of patriotic poets of his generation frequently return; Sthephan Witwicki, the author of Pastora Songs, offered the texts for no less than 10 out of 19 songs (1-2-3-4-5-7-10-14-15-18); Bolthan Zaleskyi, the Ukranian nightingale of fanciful lyric, for 4 (8-11.13.19); Adam Mickiewicz (6-12); Zygmunth Kransky (9); Ludwig Osinski (l6); and Vincent Pol (17).
Nature and country, theatricality of little stories and love (because love is sung about and because the song is often destined to a loved woman: Costanza or Maria, Delfina or George Sand) are the recurring themes interwoven into the 19 songs. The common world unifies them, from continuity to the small cycle, even if each was born as a lyrical fragment and entrusted to the fickle destiny of a donated manuscript sheet, on which in some rare cases the author wrote only the tune of the song, since he impro-vised at the piano.
Liszt defined them as thoughts and gave us an aleatory picture of the songs at the time of Chopin’s death: "As the number of these thoughts, due solely to inspiration of the heart, had grown considerably, Chopin had in his latest days thought of grouping them for publication. He had no time to do so, and they are lost and dispersed." The collection was brought together and edited by Chopin’s friend and colleague, Giuliano Fontana, for the publisher Schlesinger, who published the Posthumous Works and, in 1859, the Collection of Polish Songs with the first sixteen, as Opus 74.
In 1949 the Polish National Edition of Chopin's works (drawn up by Polskie Wydawnictwo muzyczne of Cracow) published all the nineteen songs. The language of the songs is singular, recognisably Chopin's, but as though quoted with discretion.
We know that, when listening to Enrichetta Sontag, Chopin was enchanted by the range of the voice and the admirable descending chromatic scales; in his piano writing we recognise endeavour to approach the expressivity and certain virtuosities of song, a precisely in these unique pages he wrote for the voice he exhibited a desire for more linear and concise writing, faithful to the linear trends of Polish popular melody. He did not seek fantasy of figuration or embellishments, he wanted the voice to sound like an instrument and reverberate the richness of colours and images, pulsating emotions on the rubato or lengthened on the ritenuto, rhythms and caprices of sudden gaiety or melancholic return. The strophic pattern of the song, with responses and symmetries, required this interior vibration in the singing, carrying forward the story in the apparent repetitively of the popular structure. The avoided virtuosity of writing was succeeded by a form of expressive virtuosity, in the search for the transparency of his world. The piano proposes - and concludes - the opening of the picture, and there are bits of mazurka, waltz and gallop that undulate the rhythm; Chopin forms - and not formulas - adequate to call up and dissolve that world from the memory, or to give (Melody) a wing of eternity to his thoughts. Often the piano has a refrain between verse and a conflicting motif dancing in solitary joy, and precisely there, as in the incipit or the close, the author, who was at the piano, enriched the score.
In this narration that is recomposed in mosaic blocks for interior bonds and with this introspective language that draws out popular images and rhythms from the memory, chronology did not lead to great differences, apart from the fundamental caesura of Chopin’s physical separation from his land 1930/31, which formed a division between the songs written in the home country up to1830, those of the burning 1930/31 and those of Parisian period from 1831. The dates help to draw a map of occasion and situations of mind rather than for stylistic differences; we give them in order in which the songs were published:
Fryderick
Chopin 19 Liriche pollacche op.74 per canto e pianoforte
Soprano Leyla Gencer
Pianoforte Nikita Magaloff
Transcrizioni su sei liriche pollacche di Chopin
3. Sad River poem by S. Witwicki (Comp. 1831)
4. Toast poem by S. Witwicki (Comp. 1829-30)
5. Youth poem by S. Witwicki (Comp. 1829-30)
6. Far from the Eyes poem by A. Mickiewicz (Comp. 1829-30)
7. The Swallow poem by S. Witwicki (Comp. 1829-30)
8. The Handsome Lad poem by B. Zaleskyi (Comp. 1841)
9. Melody poem by Z. Krasinski (Comp. 1847-48)
10. The Warrior poem by S. Witwicki (Comp. 1830)
11. The Two Destinies poem by B. Zaleskyi (Comp. 1845)
12. My Beloved poem by A. Mickiewicz (Comp. 1837)
13. Her Absence poem by B. Zaleskyi (Comp. 1837 or 1831)
14. The Ring poem by S. Witwicki (Comp. 1841)
15. The Betrothed poem by S. Witwicki (Comp. 1831)
16. Lithuanian Song poem by L. Osinski (Comp. 1831)
17. Falling Leaves poem by V. Pol (Comp. 1831)
18. Witchcraft poem by S. Witwicki (Comp. 1829-30)
19. Ballad poem by B. Zaleskyi (Comp. 1840)
FROM CD BOOKLET
What led Leyla Gencer and Nikita Magaloff to join in Chopin?
Leyla Gencer comes from the reigns of melodrama but has Polish roots: a blond and blue-eyed mother, the village in the hinterland of Istanbul where the Polish colony had kept its religious and peasant traditions for over a hundred years; here the little Leyla used to pass the summer and discovered an astounding world of rites and behaviours, so close to and yet so different from her oriental world.
There was also a young Polish friend around sixteen years old, who helped her the great poets of her home country. Then, in 1956 a tour took her to Poland to sing Traviata at Warsaw, Cracow and Lown: with the country it was a recognition between enthusiasm and emotion. Naturally from Warsaw she went to Chopin’s house at Zelozowa Wola, where is still a living tradition of passing pianists going to play and people to listen, seated attentively on the benches under the trees. Intimidated, Leyla comes to the door of the house to look, and the people recognise the acclaimed Violetta and applaud her. She is approached in an air of mystery by two young men, one of whom thanks to her in Turkish for having brought the songs of her land, murmurs “I am Nazım”, and they flee. She was to discover Nazım Hikmet, the great Turkish poet in exile much later, precisely in Chopin’s house. At Istanbul, for the 1974 Festival, in the Hagia Irene Church, she sang some of Chopin's songs for the first time: and Chopin was to become a love. She discovers him by dissolving the Polish language learnt in childhood, and recognises the signs of destiny that. unknown to her, had linked her to the world of Polish songs. She reads the songs through the precise truth of the recollections and affections found again, with a naturalness of musical and imaginative sweep that precedes the performer’s theatrical and stylistic awareness. She prepares the complete cycle, and takes it to the Piccolo Scala. There she involves Giorgio Strehler, a reciting voice and manager of a duet-evening at the “Teatrino” in Portofino; Romolo Valli at the Eliseo: she drags Fedele D’Amico, a deluxe speaker, onto the stage at Cagliari.
The destiny linking Nikita Magaloff to Chopin lies at the origins of his piano-playing; it was born with his master, Isidor Philipp, who, through his own master Georges Mathias, inherited Chopin’s school, and it became a vocation. Magaloff recorded Chopin’s opera omnia; he lacked Opus 74, i.e. the Polish Songs, since he had no confidence in being able to find a vocal performer capable of “playing” with softness and ideal colours, pronunciation and poetry. One evening Nikita Magaloff listened to Leyla Gencer’s Chopin: a revelation. Three concerns are immediately arranged, in Venice, Como and Turin. For both of them the Cossack, the hostess, the little village rites are familiar pictures; they know impulsive immediacy of the Polish spirit and the secret emotion and filter of Chopin’s stylistic cipher; they meet on the arcades of images and sound, the sudden pause, the breath of rarefied planes or the force of a livid attack; they become charged with ancient and modern terrifying participation in the song of Poland.
From if the event of this record is born: the recording sessions, the endeavour to recapture in the studio the atmosphere of the meeting with the public; beyond the strictly Polish area, the first recording of Chopin’s songs by official discography.
FROM CD BOOKLET
Liszt’s transcription of six of Chopin’s lyrics -in order nos. 1, 2, 14, 4, 12, I5- had its first edition in 1860, a few years after the first complete publication of the great Pole's work. Liszt’s transcription thus appeared as the affectionate tribute of an old friendship. Nikita Magaloff also comes to the six Polish Songs here, after a lifetime of recording Chopin, begun with Decca and concluded with the recent Philips full recordings.
The great Hungarian came to Chopin after getting his hand in by transcribing the Lieder of Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn. And together with the best of them, the Polish Songs also entered the repertoire of great pianists. In view of a long concert custom founded on anthology, their cyclical relationship was not grasped immediately. Even today, the record hands down rendering by Paderewski and Hoffmann for nos. 1 and 5, Rachmaninov for nos. 1 and 6, Cortot for nos. 2 and 3, Godowski and Rosenthal for no.5. Others (Arrau, Bolet, etc) left considerable renderings, textually even more respectful than those – for the most part made in the Twenties -, but unfortunately still with anthological criterion. The full recording of the whole cycle is recent.
From the study and hearing of the six Songs in the piano version there is clearly a structural consciousness that Liszt obtains through juxta-position of tonalities and movements. Five of the six tonalities (G major, G minor, E flat major, C minor, G flat major, C minor) form the perfect chord in C minor with which the cycle ends; the sixth, that of the fifth piece, constitutes in the distant tone of G flat major a structural element of break, a nocturnal dream between two impetuous moments in the same key of C. The cyclical value is enhanced by the very sequence of movements: allegro vivace, andantino, moderato, vivace, quasi allegretto, prestissimo. Liszt respects Chopin’s original tonalities, but in some cases slightly modifies the directions for the movements: the “allegro ma non troppo" of the first piece becomes the “allegro vivace” already mentioned (although afterwards it is “un poco meno allegro” to the “andantino" (n° 2 the adjective “malincanico” is added, to the “vivace” (n° 4) the adjective “brioso”, and the “allegretto" (n° 5) becomes “quasi allegretto” because of the strong tendency towards the “nocturne", a subtitle added by Liszt. The “prestissimo" (n° 6) with Liszt is “tempestuoso".
Leyla Gencer soprano
Vivaldi Sposa son disprezzata Bajazet
Vivaldi Se cerca, se dice L'Olimpiade
Paisiello Nel cor piu non mi sento La Molinara
Bellini Dopo l'oscuro nembo Adelson e Salvini
Donizetti Cantata (Saffo)
Rossini Soirées musicales: 8
ariette
La promessa
Opera Depot – 1 CD
Leyla
Gencer soprano
Vincenzo Scalera piano
Vivaldi Sposa son disprezzata Bajazet
Vivaldi Se cerca, se dice L'Olimpiade
Handel Figlia mia, non piangere Tamerlano
Handel Oh! Had I Jubal's lyre Joshua
Haydn Arianna a Naxo Cantata
Bellini Dop l'oscuro nembo Adelson e Salvini
Donizetti Che val ricchezza e trono Alina, Regina di Golconda
Mercadante Addio, felice sponte Didone abbandonata
Meyerbeer Eccomi giunto armai Il Crociato in Egitto
Rossini Siete Turchi Il Turco Italian
Donizetti Vieni o tu, che ognora io chiamo Caterina Cornaro
Paisiello Nel cor piu non mi sento La Molinara
Donizetti A mezzanotte
Bongiovanni – 1 CD
This recital is intended to be the artistic tesatament of Leyla Gencer, as it goes back to one of the last concerts given by the Turkish soprano, thirty-five years after her 1950 debut in Ankara in Cavalleria Rusticana. Since that Santuzza, a lot of water had flowed under the bridge and for Giannina Arangi-Lombardi’s pupil no whim had remained unsatisfied, in spite of the fact that her agile, light vocality initially seemed to classify her among the ranks of lyric-light sopranos. In fact, Gencer didn’t seem to care about the vocal classifications, which only Maria Callas was clamorously demolishing in that period and, thanks to her exclusive technique and a very audacious character, she ventured into th most varied roles and genres. She did justice to the best-known parts, such as Butterfly, Tosca, Liu or the two Verdi Leonoras, but also tackled Violetta – where her unusual potentiality for that period was noticed - and didn’t disdain modern rarities such as Menotti’s Il Console, Rocca’s Monte Ivnor, Dialogues des Carmélites by Poulenc and L’assassinio nella cattedrale by Pizzetti, the last two of which debuted at La Scala with her. This was something more than mere versatility and was born out with her unexpected debut (replacing Callas in San Francisco) Lucia di Lammermoor in ‘57. At that time, no Tosca or Leonara (apart from Callas) could have at all imagined such a daring transformation, extricating herself from Donizetti’s virtuosities and reaching up to dizzy heights of the top E flats. This came naturally to Gencer, even if bluffed her way into the role, as she didn’t in fact know the part. And even if in endless “catalogue”, Lucia was a role she only tackled again on other two occasions, it was nevertheless what was needed to show audiences (and in fact herself as well) how her unusual vocality could be best put to use.
This resulted in Gencer being chosen as the indispensable singer for the
revival of the extremely demanding operas from Verdi’s early period (I due
Foscari, La Battaglio di Legnano, Jérusalem and above all Macbeth),
while singer gradually developed her specialization in Bel canto with Bellini (La
sonnambula, I Puritani, Beatrice di Tenda and lastly Norma)
and in particular with Donizetti where she started with Anna Bolena and Poliuto,
as had Callas. In fact the Donizetti “bug” remained inactive for several more
years, during which Gencer was frequently to be seen indiscriminately
performing Aida, the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro, Francesca
da Rimini, Gilda, Donna Anna and Amelia in Un ballo in maschera.
In 1964 however the die was cast, and with a triumphant Elisabatta in Roberto
Devereux, Gencer ensured herself the monopoly of a repertoire all her
own, comprising exciting rediscoveries of Donizetti roles. Then came the
Borgias, Stuards, Antonia in Belisario, Caterina Comaro,
Paulina in Les Martyrs, which identified the Turkish soprano
as a Donizetti reference point, even before the success of Caballé, Sills and
Sutherland in the same roles.
This “label” however didn’t prevent her from playing Alceste one day and the next Gioconda, Medea or Mayr, Rossini’s Elisabetta and Spontini’s Agnese with chameleon-like gusto, not to mention the fact that the warlike Verdi found in Attila, Ernani and Vespri proved a pastime too irresistable to turn down. As one can imagine, boredom certainly wasn’t one of Gencer’s qualities, even if all this versatility didn’t depend entirely on a desire to avoid all obvious choices, but above all speculative curiosity (supported by very refined culture) and in particular her subjugating prima donna personality. It’s no coincidence that the series of queens formed the framework of Gencer’s repertoire, for the regal authority that characterized this soprano’s magnetism theatrical power from the outset. Temperament alone would’ve of course been useless without support of a superlative technique, which enabled her voice, which was anything but powerful as volume was concerned (but projected wonderfully on stage) and whose colur wasn’t dramatic (altough the accent definitly was) to undertake the hardest most contrasting roles in the soprano repertoire. The desire to “invent” a credible voice for the parts she was headily attracted to definitely compelled Gencer to come to compromises, such as some clearly “poitrinés” sounds in the lower register, her voice’s explosions on the high notes and the famous coups de glotte in the attack of the pianissimos, which she managed to transform into a highly personal trademark, thanks to her charisma. This change is noticeable in Gencer’s numerous recordings and can be dated around 1960: in fact, when comparing the same role in editions before and after that year (i.e. Anna Bolena, Amelia in Simone, Leonora in La forza del destino and Lidia in La Battaglia di Legnano), it’s possible to notice an emission that from the floating lightness, the concentrated low sounds and the vaporous atmosphere when handling the higher tessituras, gradually assumed the intensity, power and tension of effective dramatic incisiveness.
The new Gencer didn’t disown the young Gencer, even though nevertheless forcing her natural features, even if maintaining vigilant technical control and achieving an equally authentic vocal physiognomy. The performer’s unprejudiced generosity definitely didn’t worry about putting to her vocal chords to the test: they were very flexible, but definitely not made of steel, so around the mid sixties the first signs of vocal fatigue made themselves heard, with a consequent reduction of theatre recitals, until her last Lady Macbeth, staged in Leghorn in 1980. The singer’s activity didn’t stop there however, since she held numerous delightful concerts, among which her skill in handling a role reappeared for the last time with the prima donna star of Prova di un'opera seria by Gnecco at the 1983 Venice Carnival.
These weren’t years of melancholic withdrawal, as was seen from the still
audacious choices proposed in these recitals’ programs, but on the contrary
offered the great opera diva a period for rethinking her vocality and
experimenting other directions. Gencer in fact wisely retraced her steps,
trying to recover the beautiful fleeting emission of her early years, which the
succession of numerous violent satanic roles had altered through time.
Incredibly, she succeeded and the miracle occurred for her tardy Paris debut in
1980, with a triumphantly acclaimed recital at the Athenée, followed by one in
‘8l (already released by Bongiovanni: GB 2523-2), another in ‘83 and lastly
this one, held on 29th April l985.
The refinement of the program, divided between 18th and early 19th century
composers, is the exclusive choice of many ofthe pieces, which at that time
were authentic rarities. The prevailing pathetic side favours the careful
thoughtful emission of the voice, which Gencer manages to control with
exquisite skill, in both the intense pianissimos with which she handles the
jumps to the high notes of “Sposa. son disprezzata” from Vivaldi’s Bajazet and
the repeated delicate agility of “Oh! Had I Jubal’s lyre” from Haendel’s
Joshua. Afterward the nobility of the accent prevails, maintaining austere
majesty even in the tearful abandon, taking the most stimulating occasions in a
theatrical piece such as Haydn’s Arianna a Naxos cantata. Here
the authority of the recitative, so skilfully alternated between ceremony and
pathetic tenderness, introduces the lyricism of the catabile, repeated in
pianissimo to touching effect and concluded, in an agitated atmosphere, by the
stinging violence of that “barbarol”, in which the extremely cutting R’s reveal
all the abandoned protagonist’s resentment.
The second part is even more stimulating, in which some irresistible queens reappear (Golconda was to be Gencer’s last Donizetti performance, a couple of years before the opera’s revival in Ravenna) and with the only “en travestti” role performed by the Turkish prima donna, Armand in Il crociato in Egitto, here proposed in an aria written expressly by Meyerbeer for Giuditta Pasta, on occasion of a Parisian recital in 1825. Compared with the first part it’s already possible to hear Gencer’s stylistic subtlety in the choice of a more romantic accent, more sentimental abandon and a more open melodramatic theatricalness. And one is surprised by how the singer still ventures into daring cadenzas precious variations (e.g. the one in the reprise of “Dopo l’oscuro nembo” a magnificent anticipation by Bellini of Juliet’s cavatina in I Capuleti), brilliant fiorituras, such as in the martial Meyerbeer cabaletta, which reveals a Gencer who is unexpectedly virtuoso, precise and at the same time amused.
The encores are another surprise, with a self-ironic Rossini piece entitled “Siete turchi” (You’re Turkish), capriciously lifted from the Fiorilla-Selim duet; with the languising lightness and wonderful legato of the Caterina Cornaro aria, here in one of Gencer’s most beautiful performances; with the new proposal of the aria from Paisiello’s Molinara, with its enchanting introspective tone and delicate variations and the whispered complicity of “A mezzanotte” Almost as if to seal a last intimate appointment with her beloved Donizetti and with her adoric public, electrified by an eternally fascinating artist, whose magic still remains impenetrable and overpowering even for those listening to this recording.
1985.04.29
Paris Recital [Live DVD]
Leyla
Gencer soprano
Vincenzo Scalera piano
Vivaldi Sposa son disprezzata Bajazet
Vivaldi Se cerca, se dice L'Olimpiade
Handel Figlia mia, non piangere Tamerlano
Handel Oh! Had I Jubal's lyre Joshua
Haydn Arianna a Naxo Cantata
Bellini Dop l'oscuro nembo Adelson e Salvini
Mercadante Addio, felice sponte Didone abbandonata
Meyerbeer Eccomi giunto armai Il Crociato in Egitto
Donizetti Che val ricchezza e trono Alina, Regina di Golconda
Opera Depot – 1 DVD
