RIGOLETTO - The Fernando de Lucia Edition (Complete Opera Phonotype) 1915-18
Duca di Mantova: Fernando de Lucia (Tenor)
Rigoletto: Antonio Armentano Anticorona (Baritone)
Sparafucile / Monterone / Marullo: Luis Muñoz (Basso)
Gilda: Angela de Angelis (Soprano)
Contessa di Ceprano / Maddalena: Vida Ferluga (Mezzo)
Orchestra e Coro del Teatro di San Carlo di Napoli
Salvatore Sassano, conductor
Phonotype Records (Napoli, 1915-18)
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ATTO I
Preludio (0:00)
Questa o quella (2:21)
Ch'io gli parli (12:05)
Oh tu che la festa audace hai turbato (15:28)
Quel vecchio maledivami!... Pari siamo (16:25)
Figlia! - Mio padre! (24:36)
Deh non parlare al misero (26:36)
È il sol dell'anima (38:00)
Gualtier Maldè!... Caro nome (43:36)
Riedo!... perché?... Zitti, zitti (49:04)
ATTO II
Ella mi fu rapita!... Parmi veder le lagrime (54:03)
Povero Rigoletto!... Cortigiani, vil razza dannata (1:02:08)
Solo per me l'infamia... Piangi, piangi (1:10:01)
Sì! vendetta, tremenda vendetta (1:15:18)
ATTO III
La donna è mobile (1:17:20)
Bella figlia dell'amore (1:20:38)
M'odi!... Della vendetta alfin giunge l'istante (1:26:55)
Chi è mai in sua vece?... V'ho ingannato (1:43:00)
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19th century opera divo Fernando de Lucia (Naples 1860-1925) made more than three hundred records for "Phonotype Record", especially the complete recordings of Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Rigoletto. The technical standard of the Phonotype recordings is, fortunately, very high, with the voice well to the fore. Downward transposition in no way diminishes the sensational effect of such masterpieces of finished bel canto phrasing as De Lucia's "Questa o quella" (4:24).
During the early years De Lucia's repertoire consisted mainly of lyrical operas such as La Traviata, Rigoletto, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Don Giovanni, Lucrezia Borgia, L'Elisir d'amore, La Favorita. He kept the first four of these works in his repertoire until the early 1900s. In the Phonotype records made between the ages of fifty-six and sixty-one the voice sounds more mature, a little darker throughout, but there are no signs of age other than the little bit more effort needed to reach the highest notes, and a little bit more shortness of breath. One might even say that, after his retirement from opera, daily practice and longer periods of rest made the voice more homogeneous in scale while he retained almost unimpaired the flexibility of the head voice and all his beloved "lacreme" (tears - his own name for his beautifully expressive diminuendo). The vibrato is less aggressive in these late records. The tone frequently strikes us as more beautiful than in the earlier records.
Like Tamagno, Celestina Boninsegna, and the young Callas, De Lucia chooses to sing slowly. He recorded very few pieces of quick music, and when he did, he usually employed his mezza voce, in which he could sing either quick patter or agility passages with such stimulating accuracy and brio that one does not miss the full voice. His loving lingering over individual phrases can be exasperating... Maestro Sassano has no choice but to accompany the tenor in his languishing statements, but then he whips up the tempo impatiently when Angela de Angelis comes in: she is made to sing in time, but when the divo re-enters the orchestra is pulled back suddenly to the linger-longer...
If we listen to Caruso's record of "La donna è mobile" (1:17:20) immediately afterwards, we may note, with some surprise, that this far more modern tenor also smooths over quite a lot of dotted notes and sings even more ornaments! Both tenors phrase in a typically nineteenth-century manner: a loud phrase will be followed by a softer one, almost an "echo effect", and the tempo will slow down for the softer phrase. Caruso suggests a toying with the sustained G-sharp on the word "accento" without actually being able to perform the traditional diminuendo; De Lucia makes a great feature of the gradual fining down of the tone on this note (G-natural in his version).
There is plenty of evidence that tempi were slower and more sedate in the nineteenth century. According to Herman Klein, it was Luigi Mancinelli who first began to hurry things along at Covent Garden, introducing faster tempi, although Mapleson cylinders of Mancinelli conducting opera live at the Metropolitan in 1903, for example in Ernani, Aida, and Tosca, show tempi that are slower, on the whole, than we are accustomed to hear today, with plenty of rubato.
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