The vast repertoire of Renata Scotto encompassed 19th century vocal music, from the Classical Cherubini to the Grand Opera of Meyerbeer, through the great bel canto composers, Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti. Although she often played Verdi’s Violetta, Gilda, Lady Macbeth, Luisa Miller, and Desdemona, Scotto was perhaps most renowned for her Puccini roles. On the concert or the operatic stage, and most often on both, she left her mark on nearly all his works, from Le Villi (Anna) to Turandot (Liù). From the mid-1960s through the early 1980s Scotto was one of most widely recorded operatic sopranos; approximately forty of her complete performances are available on commercial and pirated CDs and DVDs.
Following her 1952 debut in La Traviata, Scotto was engaged by the major Italian opera companies. Her breakthrough to international stardom occurred during the visit of La Scala to the 1957 Edinburgh Festival when she replaced Maria Callas in Bellini’s La Sonnambula. She first appeared in the U.S. as Mimi in Chicago in 1960 and five years later triumphed as Cio-Cio-San at the Met, the role with which more than two decades later she bade farewell to the company. She had racked up more than 300 Met performances in New York and on tour. Fortunately for us, she can continue to be seen and heard streaming in the 1977 inaugural telecast of PBS Live from the Met, La Bohème, and eight other titles in the series. And after retiring from major lyric theatres in the 1990s, well into her sixties, she took on a new language, German, and new arduous roles, the Marschallin (Der Rosenkavalier), Kundry (Parsifal), and Klytemnestra (Elektra).
Scotto was often the object of harsh criticism. Some found her detailed phrasing overly fussy, her acting mannered, and “over the top.” Many criticized her for attempting parts that normally fell to rich-voiced dramatic sopranos—Bellini’s Norma, Ponchielli’s Gioconda, for instance. There is no denying that she was often unable to produce the requisite volume with beautiful, rounded tone. But for many there were sufficient compensations in her refined bel canto technique and her deep insight into the music and the text.
I have chosen three clips that illustrate Scotto’s command of the light-voiced lyric coloratura manner, the more assertive phrasing demanded by Verdi, and the searing intensity needed for Puccini.
At the close of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore, in the heartfelt “Prendi, per me sei libero (Take this, I have bought back your freedom)” Adina at last confesses her love for Nemorino as she offers him proof that she has saved him from his reckless enlistment in the army. This clip is from a televised 1967 Florence performance conducted by Gianandrea Gavazzeni. Scotto’s mastery of messa di voce, the gradual crescendo and subsequent decrescendo of a single note, shapes the aria with the emotions the character is finally able to express. The Nemorino you see seated next to Adina is Carlo Bergonzi.
Scotto’s Gilda is captured on two commercial recordings. This clip is drawn from the version conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini. Here, in “Tutte le feste al tempio (Each holy day in church),” Gilda confesses to Rigoletto, her distraught father, that she fell in love with a handsome stranger, the Duke of Mantua disguised as a poor student, and was later kidnapped by the Duke’s courtiers.
As Scotto enacts Cio-Cio-San’s resolve to commit suicide and bids an agonized farewell to her little son, she summons the tragic stature of the abandoned wife determined to die with honor. This clip is drawn from a remarkable 1967 recording conducted by Sir John Barbirolli. At the very end you will hear the voice of Pinkerton {Carlo Bergonzi) calling out, all too late, the name of the Japanese wife he has betrayed.
YouTube offers a profusion of Scotto’s performances. Particularly recommended are her Violetta (La Traviata), Elena (I Vespri Siciliani), Cio-Cio-San (Madama Butterfly), and the DVD of her 1977 Mimì from the Live from the Met telecast.