Франческо Таманьо, Part III.
Finale e... da capo! Таманьо 100 лет спустя.
Вокальное наследие колосса итальянской теноровой школы.
Завершение статьи М. Эспинолла о Франческо Таманьо.
Таманьо, его друзья и слушатели - о голосе, пении, образах.
Tamagno sings today
Tamagno’s voice is very different from the darkly burnished (even “baritonal”) sounds emitted by most other famous Otellos from Zenatello to Domingo. His voice is “open” and brilliant, ringing with head (sometimes even nasal) resonance, and enlivened by a vibrato that always sounds perfectly natural and that never gets out of control or degenerates into a wobble. His vibrato reminds us of Pavarotti, Melchior or the young Lauri Volpi. On records his range is from the D below the stave to the high C. The low notes are massive, the medium range is vibrant but also velvety when the singer is in a melting mood, and the famous high notes are still almost perfectly controlled, taken either softly or loudly. It is in his ability to sing crescendo and diminuendo, loudly and softly, that he rises above all other dramatic tenors. Where others shout, strain or push, Tamagno always sings. Tamagno had carefully studied the voce mista, or half-voice, and without conspicuously darkening the tone (as most of us common mortals have to do) he begins to make his passaggio di registro (or blending of the chest and head registers) on D, fourth line: this D is usually a particularly lovely note, full, rounded and shining. He can take the high notes either piano or forte and has no problems in sustaining them.
The remarks of the Gazzetta Musicale di Milano for the 13th April 1899 (anno LIV, n° 15, p.177) are apposite to the records: “The voice is of wide range, of phenomenal power, the high notes easy, the breath-spans ample and robust, the diction is perfect, in fact beyond all comparison. But to these natural gifts, which we have often admired in the past, the singer has added some acquired achievements: for example, we can delight in the delicious mezza voce, the quality and ring of which corresponds to the power of the full voice, and Tamagno can carry this mezza voce up as far as the A natural and sometimes even to B flat.”
In his records Tamagno’s breath-spans are never very long, but in spite of this and the prevalently slow tempi one never has the impression that the phrases are too short. His phrasing always seems to be broad and expansive - as in his prime it no doubt really was - which is always the case when the voice is forwardly placed and solidly supported on the breath (c.f. Tetrazzini).
Tamagno’s diction is, indeed, marvellous. No “sur-titles” would have been necessary in theatres where he was singing. He recalls Garcia’s observation in his Traité complet de l’art du chant: “Diction must not be merely correct, but also noble, elevated….To excel in the dramatic style the singer must possess a fiery soul, gigantic power; the actor must constantly take precedence over the singer.” Tamagno has not only the fiery soul, but also a touching vein of tenderness. In his records of two arias from Meyerbeer’s Il profeta he succeeds almost perfectly in singing the “Pastorale” in a light, lyrical style with beautifully modulated soft high B flats, whereas in the Hymn “Re del ciel” the style is heroic, the high B flats blasts from a golden trumpet. In his prime he had always transposed this aria a semitone higher, as he did “Celeste Aida”! The only known example of his transposing down in the theatre is the Septet in Les Huguenots, which all tenors - probably - transposed a semitone down to avoid the high C sharp.
Tamagno’s own comments on his vocal technique in conversation with De Amicis are interesting: “And when I cunningly asked him what he actually meant by the placing of the voice, he immediately gave me a practical demonstration, imitating the individual method of placing of Masini, Stagno and Patierno and other famous tenors so faithfully that I could believe I was actually hearing each one of them singing; and then, to show me the difference, he gave me an example of his own.” Then Tamagno explained: “The voice is not in the throat: it is in the lungs; and he added, beating his ample breast with one hand: - The voice is here - and he let me feel the formidable depth of his breathing, like the blowing of a factory bellows. - When a singer is finished, they say he has no voice left. Oh, no! In most cases the voice is just as it was: what he has lost is his lung power. I feel as if I had a pump inside me! Just listen to how I sustain a note.- And he attacked a high B, and he held on to it so long that I would have had time to write down an alexandrine verse in fair copy.”
Another declaration of the singer’s about his technique is quoted by Giulio Gatti-Casazza in Memories of the Opera (Charles Scribner’s Sons, Inc., New York, 1941). On the morning of the première of Guglielmo Tell at La Scala in 1899 Gatti was summoned to Tamagno’s apartment by his valet, and found him “in a little room, seated on a little low bed, quite broken up and almost in tears. ‘See here!’ he said to me. ‘See what ill luck! My nose is stopped up. How it all happened I don’t know - but one must have patience. When my nose is not open, wide open, I can’t sustain a tone. I’m very sorry - you must excuse me - but the performance must be postponed. Confound my nose!’” Gatti-Casazza had to cancel the performance, and when he visited Tamagno again two days later he told the tenor that rumour was busy accusing him of being afraid. “Tamagno uttered a roar such as to cause the room to resound. ‘Me? Afraid!’ Then changing his tone, ‘But listen to that! The voice is clear! The nose is free! Very good! Since they say that I, Tamagno, am afraid, put out your announcements. I’ll show these asses what I can do!’”
Tamagno and the Gramophone
The story of the negotiations between Tamagno and the Gramophone & Typewriter Company has been told in detail by Paul D. Lewis in The Record Collector, Vol. 40, N° 2, April, May, June 1995. In a letter of the 31st January 1903 to William Barry Owen, Managing Director of the company in London, Alfred Michaelis - head of the Italian branch - says that Tamagno had put two rooms of his villa at Ospedaletti at the technicians’ disposal. Some of the records were to be of the new twelve-inch size, for “we could take in much more of his phenomenally powerful voice on a 12-inch plate, while on a 10-inch one he would have to moderate his voice considerably, which would be a pity….” It is believed that Will Gaisberg made the recordings between Saturday 7th and Wedesday 11th February 1903. By the terms of Tamagno’s contract, after Will Gaisberg had finished recording enough multiple takes of the scheduled twelve items, his colleague Belford Royal recorded the last five sides, for private use only. Tamagno was paid a cash advance of £2,000 and became the first singer to be paid a royalty - four shillings on each record sold. The price to the public was fixed at one pound each, and each label carried a little numbered tag so that the royalties could be accurately calculated.
The great tenor was delighted with his records. Herman Klein went to visit him at Varese and “…he played them for me himself, and never shall I forget the signs of intense enjoyment which he displayed in doing so, or the undisguised delight with which he listened to and commented upon the sounds created by his own voice. He leaned over and caressed the instrument, just like a child with a new plaything or a mother holding her baby to the keyboard of the piano. They were sounds worth hearing, too, and Tamagno was very happy when I told him I thought them a splendid reproduction of his wonderful voice …. From time to time he would ejaculate with a broad smile “Che bellezza!” or “Com’è bello, non è ver?” (Herman Klein and the Gramophone, Amadeus Press, Portland, Oregon, 1990, pp. 121-2 and 76-7).
The 12” Tamagno records
The pianist accompanying Tamagno on the 1903 recordings is anonymous. He does not sound like a professional, for all his dexterity in covering up whenever Tamagno makes a slip and for all his skill in “vamping”. Dottor Piovano has, I think, solved the problem: Tamagno’s son-in-law Alfredo Talamona had begun to accompany him in some of his less important concerts, and, no doubt, his services would have been free…
In an interview published in the magazine Records and Recordings for June 1958, Sir John Barbirolli declared: “I come of a family of musicians, and in Italy both my father and my grandfather were in the orchestra for performances of Otello supervised by Verdi himself. I have more or less grown up with the music in my blood, and I can find nobody who sings it today as Tamagno did on these old acoustic recordings.”
Those hearing Tamagno’s Otello records for the first time are frequently perplexed by the slow and stately tempi he adopts. This was his style, at least in the last years of his career, causing rows with Toscanini at the rehearsals of Guglielmo Tell (1899) and Otello at La Scala. After a performance of Otello in Manchester, Barbirolli assured the record collector F.S. Winstanley that his father had also loved the Tamagno records and reported that the tempi were exactly those used by Tamagno when conducted by Faccio at La Scala. However, it is only fair to point out that there is no lack of evidence as to Tamagno’s having modified, over theyears, the careful instruction imparted by Faccio and Verdi.
In the New York Times of 4th December 1894, Henderson reported: “Signor Tamagno’s Otello was made known to this public in 1890 as a vivid and powerful interpretation, which justly entitled the tenor to the name of artist. In his performance of the part at that time he gave the impression of uncommon intelligence and high ideals. It is a truth and a pity that some of his recent work at the Opera House has done much to destroy that impression and to convince thoughtful persons that his Otello owed more to the training of the Maestro Verdi than to the natural ability of the singer….. while Signor Tamagno’s Otello has lost some of the dignity that the severe restraint of the master’s hand imposed upon it in earlier years, it has lost none of its tremendous power, its sweeping expression of fierce, overmastering passion, and its superb virility of declamation. Some of the very traits of Tamagno’s work which call for condemnation when exhibited in “William Tell” or “Lucia” fit so perfectly into the plan of Verdi’s musical embodiment of the Moor that they become virtues.”
At the time of his Otello season at the Lyceum Theatre, London, Sir Henry Irving - the great actor whose theatre it was - declared that the effect of hearing Tamagno’s voice was “like a cold shower on the neck accompanied by a flash of fire through the veins”. The music critics tempered their praise with a few reservations. In the Scottish Art Review for September1889 George Bernard Shaw complained that, though Tamagno was “a quite exceptional artist”, his voice “had not the pure, noble tone, nor the sweetly sensuous, nor even the ordinary thick manly quality of the robust tenor: it was nasal, shrill, vehement, sometimes fierce, sometimes plaintive, always peculiar and original.” (In later years Shaw would listen with pleasure to his records of Tamagno, Caruso and Patti.)
The Times critic (probably J.A. Fuller-Maitland) on the 5th July 1889 declared that “as a singer he has sacrificed too much to the cultivation of his high notes, which in truth are of magnificent volume and quality. In the lovely duet with Desdemona … the opening phrases require the smoothest possible cantabile singing, and the passage does not lie out of the ordinary compass: it was far too low, however, for its effect to be realized by Signor Tamagno, and the result was far from satisfactory. In the later scenes the vigour of his declamation caused all vocal shortcomings to be forgotten, and his singing of the fine passage representing the well known “Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness” - one of the few pages in the score which remind the hearer that he is listening to Verdi’s music - was splendid; here again the audience demanded and received its repetition. The grand duet between Otello and Iago which closes the second act produced an overwhelming effect, and indeed it is not possible to imagine much finer operatic singing.”
The reference to encores will puzzle the modern operagoer. In fact, Verdi heartily approved of such demonstrations of audience approval as applause and encores. At the first performance of Otello Faccio encored the “Fuoco di gioia” chorus, Desdemona’s “Ave Maria” and the orchestral interlude heralding Otello’s entrance in the last act. At subsequent performances by the original artists in Italy and abroad Iago’s “Credo”, Otello’s “Ora e per sempre addio” and the great duet were frequently encored. These encores, by the complex nature of the score, must have been prepared for in advance by Faccio. The same thing happened in Falstaff: at the first performance the Quartet of the Merry Wives in Act One was encored, and to Verdi’s high glee, “Quand’ero paggio” was always sung two or three times.
In accordance with his contract, Tamagno recorded each of his selections twice or more, and each performance sounds spontaneously different. Blanche Marchesi declared that Tamagno’s “Esultate!” (matrix 10W FT) was the finest example she had ever heard on records of declamatory singing. In both takes he makes an overwhelming effect, partly because he treats the music as a recitative in free time: “Esultate!” makes no effect in the theatre if the conductor beats strict time throughout. In matrix 11 the singing is equally thrilling if not quite so flawless, but he includes an extra mordent on the third syllable of “l’uragano”, which he also sings on the unpublished 10” matrix 3024. On the first syllable of “l’uragano” the score has a simple acciaccatura as a grace note, which Tamagno converts into a mordent of two notes: he does the same thing in “Ora e per sempre addio”, and we find both Maurel and Battistini doing it in “Era la notte”.
It is even more noticeable when Battistini makes this change in “Di Provenza il mar” from La traviata, effectively changing the outline of the main melody. This is an unwritten rule of bel canto for which I have been unable to find any authority in text books of the period, but, like the Church, the art of singing possesses an oral as well as a written tradition! The deliberate scansion of the phrases and the ringing, copper-coloured timbre are equally inspiring in “Ora e per sempre addio”, into which Tamagno introduces another old-fashioned embellishment, a gruppetto of five notes of a kind familiar to us from the records of Bonci, De Lucia, Anselmi, Caruso and other tenors.
Far from wilfully altering the composer’s score, the intention behind such simple embellishments was to heighten the emotional and artistic effect of the cadence, like giving a light final polish to a gem. Tamagno tends to follow the accent of the words rather than slavishly observe the musical notation; for example, at “dardi volanti” he dots the first note of the triplet figure instead of singing three equal notes, as written. I cannot think that Verdi would have disapproved of this, a stylistic feature common to all singers born about 1850. Of the five takes of “Ora e per sempre addio” matrix 12W FT is perhaps the most thoroughly successful, the ornaments neatly executed, and the great singer performs a shattering crescendo on the high B flat, followed by a diminuendo on the penultimate note.
It was recognized at the time that Tamagno’s “Death of Otello” was one of the greatest records ever achieved by the gramophone, and we have five versions available to us today, all overwhelming in their powerful expression and beautiful tone, the lower notes like a great ’cello, with a suggestion of nostalgic sadness unique to the voice of this great man. Matrix 14R FT is full of dramatic contrasts, but the voice is more responsive, more velvety and more beautifully recorded in the following matrix 15. The Milan recording of April 1904 is perhaps the all-round best version.
Tamagno studied Andrea Chénier with Giordano, who was by no means averse to adapting his music to suit the special requirements of star tenors. Michael Henstock has revealed how Giordano prepared personalized versions of Fedora and Andrea Chénier for Fernando De Lucia (involving liberal downward transposition) and I have no doubt that Tamagno’s extensive re-phrasing of much of the “Improvviso” carries the composer’s authority. Although he sang the opera only in St. Petersburg and Buenos Aires, this aria figured frequently in his concert repertoire, and in fact his very last recording of it, matrix 270, is considered by some to be his finest record.
The voice of the prompter is audible in matrix 16R (doubtless to steer the singer through the maze of short cuts) and the voice is not so closely recorded, not so warmly present, as in others of the series.
With his brilliantly clear enunciation of the words, never divorced from a solid legato line and forward placing of the tone, he enlivens Chénier’s denunciation of the clergy with thrilling snarling and biting effects, then the voice fills out with sunshine in the ecstatic finale. The ending of the aria is not effectively written - verismo tenors such as Gigli or Pertile introduce sobbing to try to ginger up the climax - and Tamagno’s impassioned declamation of “l’amor!” on high B flat seems a satisfactory solution. His individual phrasing reminds us that he is not of the verismo generation, and he arranges his breaths as though he were singing Ponchielli or Gomes: I find it very effective when he prepares a particularly thrilling B flat by singing “Gridai / vinto d’amor / ah! t’amo”.
Now comes a marvellous change, with “O muto asil del pianto” from Guglielmo Tell. Matrix 17R FT is even more successful than the better-known 10” version. No other tenor has achieved such a haunting mezza voce in this aria, nor sung it with such ease. The upper G (as on “pianto”) is taken softly, and the trumpet tones are reserved for the middle section: even here, however, he sings the climax of the upward scale (on “fuggir”) softly. He restrains himself in the cadenza, singing with a gentle, mournful tone up to high C flat (instead of the C natural of the score): he is saving the thrilling, loud high notes for the cabaletta, which he had previously recorded on two 10” takes.
Masters l8, 19, 20 and 21 were private recordings not intended for sale to the public. The mysterious 18R introduces an unnamed baritone who sings “O casto fior” from Massenet’s Il Re di Lahore. Since it appears to feature an elderly gentleman who sings with remarkable skill and sensitivity, collectors since 1948, when a unique advance sample pressing first came to light, have hoped that it might be Antonio Cotogni (1831-1918) and I myself have eagerly embraced this attribution in more than one article. However, Dottor Piovano’s researches show that Tamagno and Cotogni scarcely ever met, and now we timorously suggest that the baritone is more likely to be Tamagno’s brother Giovanni. It is true that he sounds about 75 whereas Giovanni was only 45 at the time, but it is likely that he had not kept his voice in trim, especially as he functioned as an agent for Francesco’s properties in Argentina for a number of years, returning to Italy in 1903 (just in time, perhaps, to record?) and was certainly an inhabitant of the villa in Varese at the time of Francesco’s final illness. To confuse the issue, also at the villa in 1905 was the baritone Giovanni Albinolo, a particular friend of Tamagno’s who had been assisting artist at several of his concerts, the first perhaps being Act IV of La forza del destino at the Teatro Comunale, Carpi on th 8th September 1900 and the last at the Teatro Vittorio Emanuele, Turin on the 13th September 1903. It seems unlikely that a baritone so tremulous and elderly sounding as the singer of “O casto fior” would have been invited to sing in public in duet with Francesco Tamagno, so Giovanni Tamagno remains a more likely suspect than Giovanni Albinolo! (However, it would be interesting to know when Albinolo was born!) Francesco had sung once or twice in public with his elder brother Domenico, also a tenor - for example, a duet for two tenors in Mercadante’s Il bravo. The only documented occasion on which Francesco and Giovanni sang a duet together (title unknown) was in a concert in Turin in 1885. It is interesting to observe that in a concert in which both Francesco and Giovanni sang at the Teatro Alfieri, Turin in the same year, Giovanni sang Filippo Filippi’s song “Perché” which would not only become a favourite of Francesco’s, but was destined to be the last song he ever sang in public.
This perhaps sheds new light on the “Perché” mystery: according to the EMI archives the 10” matrix number 3005 FT, now containing Tamagno’s first (unpublished) attempt at the “Improvviso”, had originally been allotted to the song “Perché”, which was subsequently re-numbered 3023 and even planned for issue under the catalogue number 52685. As various collectors own special pressings from this master, we know that the song recorded is in fact “Ti vorrei rapire” by Stanislao Gastaldon and the singer is a baritone. Where did G & T pick up the name of Filippi’s “Perché”, scarcely a popular ditty? It seems likely that someone recorded it there in the villa at Ospedaletti, and it could have been Giovanni - or did he then, at the last moment, substitute the rather better known “Ti vorrei rapire”? I like the idea that, after recording five sides, Francesco said: “All right, Giovanni, now you have a go!” and Will Gaisberg, having initially numbered the wax master 3005, decided that it was inappropriate for an amateur baritone who had no contract with G & T to figure in the Tamagno series, and proceeded to number Francesco’s next recording 3005II. By the time they got to the recording session that Paul D. Lewis designates “Session III” (or perhaps at the end of Session II) some agreement had been reached about placing “Ti vorrei rapire” back in the list by re-numbering it 3023.
“O casto fior” is a distinguished piece of singing. The recitative is delivered with authority, the aria persuasively murmured in a pleasing mezza voce. Although some notes are tremulous, the overall effect is of a firmly supported voice that has aged comfortably and “thinned out” in quality rather like Battistini’s or Santley’s. The emission is pure and round, free of the guttural resonances of the “modern” school of baritones - Ruffo, Stracciari and their imitators. Like Battistini and Lassalle, the creator of the role of Scindia, our anonymous charmer lingers lovingly over the melody with deliberate portamento and expressive rubato. Giovanni Tamagno, if it is indeed he, also sings the great duet “Sì, pel ciel marmoreo giuro” from Otello with Francesco, another “creator’s record” the very existence of which was unknown until work began on this edition of re-pressings. He proves equal to the occasion, articulating the triplet figures cleanly. If it seems rather a pity that Otello politely allows Iago to stand nearer the recording horn, a courtesy that Tamagno would certainly not have extended to Maurel, we can hear how grandiloquent, how thrilling is his phrasing; the deliberate tempo and free time at the cadences are just like his other Otello recordings. We are not surprised when he transposes the word “sterminator” an octave higher - he must have done this even in his prime. It is rather more of a shock when tenor and baritone both introduce an appoggiatura on “stendo”, just before the last phrase. The old lion snatches plenty of extra breaths but still cavorts with ease above the stave, pronouncing the words clearly and nonchalantly sailing up to the B flats.
Hélion’s prayer “Dei del patrio suol” (“Dieux de mon pays!”) from Messaline is interesting because of the changes from the score that De Lara must have written in for Tamagno; the record is a worthwhile addition to his legacy, a particularly expansive and incisive piece of declamation. He appears to have transposed the
prayer a semitone up, taking him up to a high B natural that is not perfectly supported, and ending on a typical example of Tamagno’s ability to declaim words on the high A. No doubt with singers like Calvé, Tamagno and Renaud this exotic pseudo-French music would be evocative and stirring.
The title catalogued in the archives as “Ave Maria” is more properly described as “A Santa Maria di Oropa”, words by Giovanni Camerana, music by Luigi Mapelli, composed for the wedding of Margherita Tamagno and Alfredo Talamona, and Tamagno duly sang it at the ceremony on the 6th January 1899 in the chapel of his villa at Varese. In his biography (Francesco Tamagno, (Otello fu… ), La vita del grande tenore, Torino, Ente Morale Scuole Officine Serali, 1990) Mario Ruberi prints the vocal score of the entire composition, which is in A major and takes the form of an extended melodious recitative, un-memorable as music but lovingly declaimed by Tamagno, in devotional mood. The music lies comfortably in his upper medium range with effective flights above the stave to a sustained G sharp at “Ascolti il coro”, several high As and a sustained B flat. Preparing for this high B flat Tamagno, as so often in his records, instead of singing the previous note as written - here it is an F natural - anticipates the high note and so, in fact, sings two B flats where only one is written!
It was Will Crutchfield who pointed out to me that Tamagno must have been perhaps the only singer ever to introduce the prompter into the recording studio - we hear him at work particularly in the Hérodiade selections (which Tamagno had then not yet sung on the stage) but also in the death of Otello and elsewhere. Even in his old warhorses he sometimes misses his entry, and there is a hilarious moment in an unpublished take of “Re del ciel” from Il profeta when, probably thrown off balance by the pianist’s uncertainty about the cuts in the coda, he fluffs his high B flat, and we hear him exclaim:”Una parola!” - which we might translate as “Easier said than done!”
For all his perhaps slipshod approach to questions of musical precision and accuracy of score-reading, Tamagno is one of the most charismatic and communicative singers ever to record his voice for the wonderment of future generations. He had his own, simple but deeply felt musicianship and feeling for a
phrase or a line that allowed him to reach heights of powerful expression. As he once told Verdi: “You see, Maestro, many singers are greater artists than I am, but no one has more heart.” The privilege of listening to the complete recordings of Tamagno helps us to realise his immense stature among the great names of music drama.
A touching gramophonic footnote: on the 22nd October 1898 Tamagno went to hear Enrico Caruso in the world première of Cilea’s L’Arlesiana at the Teatro Lirico, Milan, and on the way out said to the editor of Il Secolo: “He will be the greatest of all of us.” As part of his contract with G & T Tamagno was presented with a few free gramophones and records, and he chose one record each of De Lucia and Alessandro Moreschi, but six of Caruso.
(c) Michael Aspinall, 2007
Фотографии Ф. Таманьо - из собрания Принстонского университета
courtesy of www.cs.princeton.edu