Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia - de los Angeles, Alva, Bruscantini [Gui] [2 CD]

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Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia - de los Angeles, Alva, Bruscantini [Gui] [2 CD]

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Vittorio Gui and Rossini's "Barber"

More than any conductor of his generation, Vittorio Gui (1885-1975) helped redeem Rossini's opere buffe in general, and Il barbiere di Siviglia in particular, from the endless alterations and distortions they had undergone for the best part of a century. In an essay "Tradition and Rossini's Barber", which accompanied the present recording when it first appeared in 1963, Gui wrote: "These incrustations ultimately assert themselves under the terrible name of "traditions", frightening young interpreting artists who no longer feel free to search out the secret of those signs under which lies hidden the eternal life of creation".
Gui's Rossini revolution began in 1925 with a series of now legendary performances of L'italiana in Algeri, staged in a charming semi-private theatre in Turin, with Conchita Supervia in the title role. The revelation of Rossini as an elegant stylist, urbane and classicaly-minded, suited the neo-classical temper of the times. (How Rossini would have relished works like Pulcinella, Apollo, and Jeu de cartes.) "Traditional" Rossini continued to hold sway in opera houses, but the quiet revolution continued with Gui's 1929 revival of Rossini's exquisite late masterpiece the Petite messe solennelle, Supervia's brilliant performances in La Cenerentola, and, in 1942, Gui's historic re-thinking of what he called "the all-too-distorted Barber". The production in Florence's Teatro Comunale starred Gino Bechi as Figaro and Ferruccio Tagliavini as the Count, but it was Gui's first-hand study
of Rossini's autograph manuscripts in Bologna and Pesaro that gave this production - and Gui's subsequent productions in Palermo, Venice, and, finally, Glyndebourne - their unique authority and appeal.
With his edition of Il barbiere, Gui anticipated much that was later to find permanent embodiment in the Fondazione Rossini's Critical Edition, edited by Alberto Zedda. Indeed, Gui was considerably irked by what he took to be Zedda's (and Abbado's) discourtesy when a 1971 recording based on the new Critical Edition was written up as a decisive and revelatory break with the bad old traditions of the past. Fences were later mended (Gui left his entire music library to the Fondazione Rossini) but Gui was right to feel that it was he, and not Zedda or Abbado, who had first reclaimed Il barbiere from the musical and theatrical bear-pit.
The list of things Gui had begun to put right in 1942 is formidable. First, the role of Rosina, written for a mezzo-soprano, had to be reclaimed from bird-brained soubrettes. In fact, as the casting of the delectable Victoria de los Angeles reveals, Gui's essentially classical view of the score left him with a marked preference for a lighter rather than a darker mezzo in this crucial role. In a later essay on the opera, written in 1969, Gui described Rosina as "the perfec example of the joy of living, of youth, love, and aspiration to liberty; she is a rose who opens herself up to the light but who isn't entirely without thorns to protect her against evil". Under Gui, Rosina's cavatina "Una voce poco fa" is restored to the lower key of E major and Rossini's own music is reinstated in the Act 2 singing lesson. (For years ,opranos had turned this into a private recital sequence, with showpieces like Arditi’s Il baccio much in favour.) It was also neccessary for Gui to restore to Dr Bartolo the two superb and musically difficult numbers Rossini had originally provided. Over the years simpler music had made it increasingly easy for stage directors to cast voiceless buffoons in the role of this distinguished pillar of the Seville community. Comparable restraints were put on performers of the role of Don Basilio, a popular role for ham actors of whom (according to Gui) Chaliapin was one of the most offensive. Typically, Gui's Don Basilio, Carlo Cava, is required to sing his "Calumny" aria in the original key of D, where on a rival recording Cava got away with the traditional downward transposition to C. Though Gui permitted some cuts in the recitatives, he very rightly declined to reinstate the Count's lengthy aria at the end of the opera. It was reassigned with Rossini's consent within monyhs of the opera's prima in 1816 and retaining it, as some "authenticists" have done, is pseudo-scholarship of the worst klind.

Gui also paid great attention to Rossini's original orchestrations, ignoring beefed-up nineteenth-century versions of the overture and preferring, instead, the scoring specified by Rossini in 1815 when the piece had the seccond of its three outings, as overture to Elisabetta, regina d'lnghilterra. Zedda's edition would later refine the orchestral detail even more, and now we have period instruments as well. But Gui's "ear", both as a conductor and as an editor, is second to none. Helped by the refined and stylish playing of Beecham's RPO, and a series of beautifully honed performances by the Glyndebourne principals, his reading turns Il barbiere into an obvious but distinctive sequel to Mozart's Figaro. Rossini himself couldn't - wouldn't - have asked for more.

– Richard Osborne, 1992 (review extracted from the booklet)