Gabriella Gatti - Selva opaca & Act II Duet [William Tell] - 1948
Excerpts from the 1948 "First Opera Film Festival," which summarized versions of four operas; Marriage of Figaro, Don Pasquale, Carmen, and Guillaume Tell (with Tito Gobbi, no less!)
Tenor/Guglielmo - José Soler
Orchestra e Coro del Teatro dell'Opera di Roma
Conductor - Angelo Questa
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Gabriella Gatti. You've never heard of her. Well, the voice isn’t just an instrument. It’s a political emblem and a marketing device for popular values. But what happens when power prefers a voice that echoes its own grandiose values?
Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, in his /Voci parallele/, states that Gatti was someone who really began her career with a handicap—primarily because, from the choosing of repertoire to the casting and billing of singers, the theatrical milieu of Italy and Germany was almost totally absorbed in an "authoritative voice" that took pride of place at a lavish banquet—and left "only crumbs" for the others. When the central thrust of national opera life comes from and is the State—and the State has a preference for a certain voice—that voice profits from the situation and in effect cuts off access to anyone else who doesn’t have the blessing of what Lauri-Volpi calls the “constitutional mediocrity.” Oop!
That "authoritative voice" was Maria Caniglia. And today, if you weren't willing to dig deeper, you'd think she was virtually the only soprano on the Italian scene in the 1930s and 40s.
But (the criminally overlooked and undervalued) soprano Gabriella Gatti was in the background, building an extremely varied repertoire as an impeccable stylist and a refined singer in an era that was still tied to the powerful and exuberant verist voices.
Her stage work ranged from Orfeo to Mozart's Countess to Norma to Desdemona, Violetta, Tosca. From 1934 she was an indispensable interpreter of new and rare operas. She sang in first-ever performances by composers Robbiani , Malipiero , Frazzi , Casella, Alfano, Gnecchi; and also in Busoni's Turandot , in Wozzeck , L'enfant Prodigue , Rinaldo , Der Freischütz (Agata) , Oberon (Rezia) , William Tell (Matilde).
But the chamber repertoire was her beloved specialty. Indeed she was one of the only—and earliest—high-level singers dedicated to the works of Monteverdi, Carissimi, Scarlatti, Cesti, and Vivaldi (to name the few that she recorded).
In these recordings and the others of more standard repertoire, Gatti displays total command—nay, mastery—of the voice, with an clear, penetrating and unusually pure tone, in which the pitch and vowel are in total consonance. It features an extremely well graded intensity scale from the bottom to the top. The upper part of the voice is allowed to bloom almost placidly, rather than being ejected toward a high note and forcefully held (the modern norm). It is above all a very beautiful voice. Journalists of her time said so. Some of them found the voice cold. Others remarked on the "warmth of the accent" and her perfect choice of "colour." Others noted the "severe style of interpretation, inspired by superior musicality."
Gatti was by nature a shy and rather reserved person. Naturally this contributed to her not being more well known. I had hoped to create a long video discussing her in depth. But I feel its better to let the recordings speak for themselves. I'll be uploading more in the coming days.
She was not just an interesting singer. She was unique artist and an excellent musician with frankly an extraordinary voice. I think listeners and singers alike could learn much from studying Gatti's recordings. In some ways she reminds me of Sigrid Onegin for her simplicity and intellectual directness.
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