REVIEWS
Guilaume Tell, recorded live at the Vienna Staatsoper, 24 October 1998
Gustafson/ Kotoski/ Ungureanu/ Sabbatini/ Hampson
Vienna Staatsoper Orchestra and Chorus/ Luisi
Orfeo 640053D Release date: June 2005
Rossini: Guillaume Tell, The Guardian, July 15, 2005
Un Tell para la historia, Diverdi, May 2005
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Rossini: Guillaume Tell
Tim Ashley, The Guardian, July 15, 2005
Rossini's Guillaume Tell has a somewhat vexed history. The overture is arguably the most popular piece of classical music ever written. The opera it precedes, however, has become something of a rarity. Rossini's contemporaries and immediate successors would have found this odd. At its Paris premiere in 1829, Tell was hailed as milestone in musical history: Rossini's fellow composer Gaetano Donizetti went so far as to say that the second act was written by God, since no human being could have conceived anything so sublime.
The reasons for its decline, however, remain imperfectly chronicled. The often-voiced criticism that its length is excessive, nowadays cuts no ice. Form and style may have more to do with it. Tell quickly became a model for "grand opera" in the technical sense of the term - a work on a historical subject conceived on a vast scale - a genre which gradually came to exert a stranglehold on the 19th-century imagination. Those who still associate Rossini with vocal extravagance are likely to be disappointed: despite the arduous difficulty of some of the music, particularly for Arnold, the tenor lead, Rossini subordinates flamboyance to psychological expression.
The thing that now feels most remarkable about Tell is that such an establishment composer should tackle so revolutionary a subject. Set during the Austrian occupation of Switzerland, the opera examines the nature and morality of political engagement in a time of oppression. The work's tension derives from its advocacy of both resistance and the need to mourn the personal losses it inevitably entails. Tell is the intellectual revolutionary, whose decision to embrace political activism puts his family in danger. The affair between the Swiss patriot Arnold and Mathilde, daughter of the Austrian governor, is irrevocably destroyed when her father arbitrarily kills his.
Recordings, like performances, are rare, and this is the opera's first outing on disc for more than 10 years. It derives from radio tapes of a live performance at the Vienna Staatsoper in 1998, and is chiefly notable for Thomas Hampson's Tell, Giuseppe Sabbatini's Arnold and Fabio Luisi's conducting. Tell is a role Hampson was probably born to play, and his combination of deep intellectualism and quiet intensity is uniquely telling, both in his assertive defiance of the tyrannical Gessler and in the harrowing emotions he generates in the notorious scene in which Gessler forces him to shoot an apple off his son Jemmy's head. Sabbatini, all lyrical passion and thrilling high notes, is equally powerful, above all in the scene in which his illusions crumble in the wake of his father's death. In the pit Luisi generates inexorable tension rather than proceeding by violent fits and starts.
Elsewhere some of it is a bit hit and miss. Nancy Gustafson admirably conveys Mathilde's moral courage - it is she, rather than Arnold, who breaks off their relationship - but also makes heavy weather of her big arias. Both Dawn Kotoski's Jemmy, and Mihaela Ungureanu as Tell's wife Edwige, are occasionally less than steady, though both superbly capture the terror of ordinary people trapped in a violent world.
As with all live recordings, it generates a sense of occasion and excitement that no studio version could ever capture, though in this instance there's also a fair amount of stage clatter, and a lot of artillery fire, which makes you jolt a bit. It's a noble, provocative achievement, though, while Hampson's performance, above all, makes it essential listening.
Un Tell para la historia...
Santiago Salaverri, Diverdi, May 2005
... o al menos para la historia de la Staatsoper vienesa, donde el capolavoro rossiniano -más elogiado de boquilla que verdaderamente comprendido y disfrutado, y víctima de contumaces mutilaciones- hacía su presentación el 24 de octubre de 1998 en su versión original francesa, tras haberse paseado por las escenas líricas de la capital danubiana durante 170 años (con no excesiva asiduidad en el último siglo, por otra parte) sólo en sus traducciones alemana o italiana. Este simple hecho ya avalaría el interés de la propuesta discográfica de ORFEO D´OR (dedicada, por cierto, en sus últimas incursiones en los archivos más recientes de la Staatsoper, a repertorios bien diversos del austro-germánico, trátese del Onegin, del Billy Budd o del presente Tell), además de tratarse de una de las rarísimas versiones francesas circulantes (Fraga sólo cita, en su Guía Rossini, la de Gardelli; no sé si hay alguna otra).
Pero otras muchas razones otorgan su primacía a esta función: su trío protagonista, en el que junto a Nancy Gustafson -la soprano de apellido sueco natural de Illinois que está bordando una destacada carrera en los repertorios más diversos- como una sólida y temperamental Matilde, destacan dos protagonistas masculinos de excepción, ante todo el barítono Thomas Hampson en el rol titular, al que aporta una verosimilitud, una nobleza de acentos de verdadero resistente contra la tiranía, una contemporaneidad de visión y una encarnación dramática, heroica, diría (pese a que su voz acusa levemente la usura del tiempo), que le colocan en la cima de la discografía (por encima de los Bacquier, Milnes o Zancanaro, por citar sólo intérpretes de versiones no «históricas»).
Pero no menos sorprendente resulta la incorporación que del terrorífico papel de Arnold - creado para Nourrit y su técnica de voz mixta, y que Duprez abordara en registro di petto para consternación del propio Rossini- hace un estilista tan consumado (y, por cierto, tan injustamente tratado por los «entendidos» del Real en su Rigoletto madrileño) como Giuseppe Sabbatini, que las da todas, absolutamente todas, para regocijo del público vienés, además de hacer gala de sus mejores cualidades belcantistas y de un francés de calidad inhabitual entre los intérpretes transalpinos.
Los varios bajos requeridos por la obra (Melchtal, Walter Furst, Gessler), de intervenciones importantes pero más episódicas, están muy correctamente servidos, así como Jemmy, el muchacho de la dichosa manzanita (aquí privado de su aria, como suele hacerse), a cargo de Dawn Kotoski. Las innumerables bellezas de Guillaume Tell, desde la inconmensurable obertura a ese segundo acto que llevara a Donizetti a decir que si el resto era de mano de un genio, aquél era obra directa del buen Dios, están estupendamente traducidos por la Filarmónica en sus cometidos operísticos (y que conste que no siempre es así; léanse las recientes críticas de Puritani, demoledoras por lo que hace a la prestación orquestal), bajo la dirección de Fabio Luisi. Una versión muy completa (tres horas y cuarto), y una interpretación con mucho que admirar nos ofrece una nueva ocasión de asomarnos a esta culminación del genio rossiniano. ¡A ver si de una vez la vemos por aquí!
This page was last updated on: October 6, 2005
