Leoncavallo

The Opera Rara label devotes itself to just what the name says, not only recording rare operas, but also mounting them in well-financed productions. They've excavated works that promise to reshape the operatic repertory some, and so it may be with this work by Ruggero Leoncavallo, which he preferred to the ubiquitous I Pagliacci. It offers a pure verismo story, featuring the titular character, a French music-hall singer who gets involved in a doomed affair with a married Parisian businessman.

"[Cavalleria Rusticana:] Bergonzi is a stylish, ardent Turiddu whose virile charms glitter in his every phrase and Fiorenza Cossotto makes a thrilling Santuzza motivated and driven by a palpable conviction; (...) But the real hero of the opera is Karajan, whose direction of this powerful work is magnificent. (…) [Pagliacci:] As the rivals, Carlo Bergonzi and Giuseppe Taddei are superb. Taddei’s sinister, hunch-backed clown, gently forcing the play-within-the-play closer to reality until it finally bursts out violently is a masterly assumption, and Karajan controls the slow build-up of tension with a grasp that few conductors could equal. (…) The third disc is filled by a selection of very rich, very soft-centred opera intermezzos."

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