In Memoriam: Rosalind Elias and Gabriel Bacquier

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In our last post (http://operapost.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-met-in-time-of-pandemic-unfinished_0866050429.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Operapost+%28OperaPost%29) we noted that in May 2020 the Met mourned the passing of two stars of a previous generation. Here, in gratitude for their many wonderful performances, we remember Rosalind Elias (March 13, 1930-May 3, 2020) and Gabriel Bacquier (May 17, 1924-May 13, 2020).

Rosalind Elias

Only the fabled Louise Homer (1871-1947) sang more often at the Met as a leading mezzo-soprano than did Rosalind Elias. Thirty-five seasons, fifty roles, and 687 performances underpin Elias’s place in the company history. She made her 1954 debut as one of the nearly anonymous warrior maidens in Act III of Die Walküre. During her first three seasons Elias took her turn as a supporting player, a comprimaria. Some of the secondary characters assigned to her afforded extended dramatic and vocal opportunities (Suzuki [Madama Butterfly], Siébel [Faust], for instance), but most parts were brief (a Peasant Girl [Le Nozze di Figaro], a Flower Maiden [Parsifal]). It was not until opening night 1957 that Elias had her big break. She was cast as Tatiana’s sister, Olga, in a new production of Eugene Onegin. And later in the same season she was tapped for the pivotal role of Erika in the world premiere of Vanessa. In fact, Samuel Barber wrote the score’s most memorable aria to suit Elias’s voice--wide-ranging, with an identifiably dusky timbre, powerful enough to convey the young woman’s nervous energy and depth of emotion. “Must the Winter Come so Soon” became a favored audition piece for mezzo-soprano. Here is Elias in the original cast recording of Vanessa.

Erika put Elias on the path to major assignments--opening nights, new productions, world premieres. And core mezzo parts such as Cherubino (Le Nozze di Figaro), Dorabella (Così fan tutte), and Laura (La Gioconda) continued to come her way. But she was at her best in Vanessa and Werther. In this recording of scenes from Massenet’s opera, the lovelorn Charlotte gives way to the tears she has long suppressed. The warmth and doleful sound of Elias’s lyric mezzo serves the stifled ardor of the Goethe/Massenet heroine as it did the neo-Romantic idealism of Barber’s Erika.

Gabriel Bacquier

One of very few post-War French singers to achieve stardom with international opera companies, Gabriel Bacquier came to New York in 1964 following engagements in Vienna, Milan, London, and major European festivals. In eighteen Met seasons he made 123 appearances. It was no surprise that a leading French baritone would debut as the High Priest in a new production of Samson et Dalila. But despite his French roots and early experience on French stages, Bacquier would specialize in the Italian repertoire, and most often as Tosca’s nemesis. His Scarpia is a subtle hybrid of delicacy and brutality. His fatal face-off with the Roman diva is laced with practiced elegance and unbridled lust. We hear Bacquier at his peak, in a live performance from the Opéra.

Later in his career, Bacquier found a home in the buffo manner. He was memorable as Donizetti’s Don Pasquale and he made a star turn out of the irascible Fra Melitone in La Forza del destino. The aria that follows is excerpted from a role that, alas, he never sang in New York. The riotous conclusion of Act I, Scene 1 of Verdi’s Falstaff bristles with the baritone’s physical and tonal energy as the “fat knight” trumpets his cynical definition of “Onore (Honor).”

 

 

Don Pasquale: The Basso Buffo

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On March 12, 2016, the Metropolitan Opera will broadcast via radio its matinee of Gaetano Donizetti’s comic opera, Don Pasquale. The eponymous role generally falls to a specialist in the comic characters of Mozart (Leporello in Don Giovanni, for example), or Rossini (Don Bartolo in Il Barbiere di Siviglia), or, of course, Donizetti himself (Dulcamara in L’Elisir d’amore). The success of the basso buffo hangs on the ability to regale the audience, to incite its laughter, more than it does on the quality of the voice. Above all, the bass must have the nimble diction that delivers rapid-fire patter, source of much of the fun. Often drawn from the company’s second rank, the basso buffo is nevertheless expected to carry significant musical and theatrical responsibility, yet he is rarely an opera’s focal point. Don Pasquale departs from this norm. In this ensemble work for a quartet of singers, the basso buffo is the central figure.

If we are to believe the reviewers, Salvatore Baccaloni was the first Met Pasquale, in the forty years since the opera’s company premiere, to grab and hold the spotlight. In the 1940 revival, and only then, did the basso buffo take full charge by upstaging his colleagues. The matinee broadcast, which we had access to in a recording, the one cheered by critics present in the opera house, does justice to Baccaloni’s outsized personality, reflected in his rich, shuddery voice; the delighted audience is frequently heard in appreciative response to his antics. Even the cool and acerbic Virgil Thomson agreed that the afternoon belonged to the bass, whom he compared to actors of genius Mary Garden, Fyodor Chaliapin, W. C. Fields, and Raimu! Baccaloni, who reigned as the Met’s principal basso buffo until the debut of Fernando Corena in 1954, continued to sing with the company until 1965.

Here is Baccaloni in a 1932 Italian recording of the Act III duet between Don Pasquale and Doctor Malatesta (the baritone is Emilio Ghirardini). Pasquale, a rich, stingy old bachelor, has been tricked into a mock marriage by his friend, Malatesta. Pasquale believes he has found proof that his much, much younger, spiteful, and spendthrift “wife,” Norina, is cheating on him, and with Malatesta, is elated at the prospect of catching her “in flagrante.” The second part of the duet requires the rapid-fire delivery to which we made allusion above.

In a 1979 video of this same duet, with subtitles in English, the great Welsh buffo Geraint Evans offers a Pasquale less broad than Baccaloni’s, but just as funny. He and Russell Smyth, the Malatesta, both anglophones, are adept at articulating the patter of the conclusion. 

The rendez-vous of Norina and her young lover, Ernesto, is a passage of sustained lyricism that we count among the most ravishing in all opera. First, Ernesto, Pasquale’s nephew who wants to marry Norina, sings a lilting serenade. Cesare Valletti, who took the role in the Met’s 1955 revival, was the company’s principal tenore di grazia through the 1950s. He tempers the over-the-top protestations of love declaimed for Pasquale’s benefit with his customary sincerity, sweet timbre, and command of subtle dynamics.

Following the serenade, without pause, Ernesto and Norina, their voices echoing and entwining, sing a love duet designed to enrage the presumably cuckolded Pasquale. “Tornami a dir” is a test for the singers as they match phrasing, stress, and tonal beauty at pianissimo level. In this 1930s recording, Tito Schipa and Toti Dal Monte ply their bel canto techniques to achieve a remarkable unison.

Like all operas designated “buffa,” Don Pasquale ends happily. The foolish faux husband, having seen the error of his ways, gives his blessing to the young couple.