BaL 17.03 18 - Massenet: Manon

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

... and 18 years later, the BaL choice remains the same.

[HighlandDougie]

Barbs scoops the pool this week. For me, an ideal BaL: a work which I cannot ever remember hearing, an articulate and intelligent presenter and some fine singing. No doubt the cognoscenti might find something about the Pappano recording to un-recommend but to a French opera duffus it sounded remarkably convincing as a top choice.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

For those who don't know this opera, this isn't a bad way in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXW6iqVTnUU

I thought it was an informative BaL, but I don't feel any great necessity to buy anything - and this online film will do if I ever do feel the need to listen to the opera. Fairly attractive Music, and if I see a cheap copy of the Gedda/Sils set in a charity shop, I'll get it ... otherwise, there are so many other works that I find so much more thrilling and absorbing that I want to hear first.

[BBMmk2]

... and 18 years later, the BaL choice remains the same.

Some people be saving their money today!

[Master Jacques]

Barbs scoops the pool this week. For me, an ideal BaL: a work which I cannot ever remember hearing, an articulate and intelligent presenter and some fine singing. No doubt the cognoscenti might find something about the Pappano recording to un-recommend but to a French opera duffus it sounded remarkably convincing as a top choice.

To my mind it's a pity that Flora Willson was let loose on this one: you can bet with her that if Pappano's in the field, then he will win! It would have been nice to hear something of the other characters too, as without them the picture seems very lop-sided.

So, here's another thumbnail perspective on this "top choice": Pappano's reading is theatrical enough in its variety of tempi, but it is robustly driven and too smoothly blended orchestrally to allow us to enjoy Massenet's piquant instrumentation - compare Monteux in those respects.

The two principals are stylistically bold but neither displays the requisite subtlety for either the music or (especially) the text. They make Massenet's insouciant balance between comedy and pathos sound closer to full-out verismo, without the half-shades and ambiguities of opéra comique - as witness Alagna's Italianate sobbing and Gheorghiu's full-blooded, Tosca-like tigress in Act IV. This is not Puccini, but they seem to have forgotten that. Both give conventionally 'operatic' performances which draw attention away from the specially delectable quality of the music.

Despite a somewhat cavernous acoustic and fuzzy orchestral balance, Cotrubas and Kraus for Plasson make a much better fist of bringing the opera to its own life, as opposed to thrashing the pelt off it. I was very baffled by Willson's dismissal of Alfredo Kraus as being "out of sorts": I hear something very different, a stylish, precise and epicurean voice production totally in tune with the music, and totally in time with his conductor. Cotrubas conveys something which Gheorghiu never does: the innocence and charm of a young girl gone wrong (perhaps that is what Willson disliked - she likes her heroines strong and feisty!)

Apart from the incomparable De Los Ángeles-Monteux version, I would recommend any of the all-French recordings rather than the international casts. There is a 1951 Decca recording under Albert Wolff (with Janine Michaeu as Manon) which is available as downloads, or even CD if you look hard enough. That gives a far superior idea of the fresh possibilities of this lovely opera (despite some excisions) than the overblown and thrusting Pappano version.

Just my two pennorth!

[ardcarp]

I was amused by FW's very apt description of French operatic tenors as 'narrow bore'. I know exactly what she means...and indeed to be truly HIPP, we ought to hear that sound rather than the full Italian.

[HighlandDougie]

To my mind it's a pity that Flora Willson was let loose on this one: you can bet with her that if Pappano's in the field, then he will win! It would have been nice to hear something of the other characters too, as without them the picture seems very lop-sided.

So, here's another thumbnail perspective on this "top choice": Pappano's reading is theatrical enough in its variety of tempi, but it is robustly driven and too smoothly blended orchestrally to allow us to enjoy Massenet's piquant instrumentation - compare Monteux in those respects.

The two principals are stylistically bold but neither displays the requisite subtlety for either the music or (especially) the text. They make Massenet's insouciant balance between comedy and pathos sound closer to full-out verismo, without the half-shades and ambiguities of opéra comique - as witness Alagna's Italianate sobbing and Gheorghiu's full-blooded, Tosca-like tigress in Act IV. This is not Puccini, but they seem to have forgotten that. Both give conventionally 'operatic' performances which draw attention away from the specially delectable quality of the music.

Despite a somewhat cavernous acoustic and fuzzy orchestral balance, Cotrubas and Kraus for Plasson make a much better fist of bringing the opera to its own life, as opposed to thrashing the pelt off it. I was very baffled by Willson's dismissal of Alfredo Kraus as being "out of sorts": I hear something very different, a stylish, precise and epicurean voice production totally in tune with the music, and totally in time with his conductor. Cotrubas conveys something which Gheorghiu never does: the innocence and charm of a young girl gone wrong (perhaps that is what Willson disliked - she likes her heroines strong and feisty!)

Apart from the incomparable De Los Ángeles-Monteux version, I would recommend any of the all-French recordings rather than the international casts. There is a 1951 Decca recording under Albert Wolff (with Janine Michaeu as Manon) which is available as downloads, or even CD if you look hard enough. That gives a far superior idea of the fresh possibilities of this lovely opera (despite some excisions) than the overblown and thrusting Pappano version.

Just my two pennorth!

Eek! I knew that some forumista would be an expert on Massenet so that is, as they say where I'm from, me telt. I've discovered the Plasson lurking on my shelves (in the Opéra français box) - and the Wolff can be had on 2 CDs for 3,90€, although I suspect that it might just be a dodgy CD transfer of the LPs.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Both give conventionally 'operatic' performances which draw attention away from the specially delectable quality of the music.

I'm afraid that's what many opera singers do.

[Bobinet]

I think Master Jacques has more or less nailed it in message 20: the winner "neither displays the requisite subtlety for the music or (especially) the text... full-out verismo". I will need to read the libretto with the music again sometime but I doubt there is much there to justify Pappano's principals' hyped-up approach in the Hôtel de Transylvanie scene; that is where I felt the reviewer, who was fine otherwise, gave the winner a bit of a shove over the line. It must be very difficult to compare a dozen or more recordings of a full-length opera in 45-50 minutes, but instead of spending so much time looking at the pastiche aspects of the score it would have been profitable to look at some of the ensemble requirements of the work - which are pretty exacting - and where Monteux's cast win hands down.

[Master Jacques]

I'm afraid that's what many opera singers do.

Twas not ever or always thus! I've just been doing some work on Michael Langdon, one of Covent Garden's fine principal basses back in the Solti days - forumites may know his mahogany-hued Claggart in the Decca Billy Budd CD set - and I was interested to read about the great pains he took to be stylistically on the money, for whatever role he was looking at.

He spent years studying Baron Ochs (first with the coach John Matheson and then with Edward Downes) before asking David Webster, Covent Garden's head man, to hear him in the part. Webster liked what he heard, and paid him to study the finer points of style and language with Alfred Jerger in Vienna, who had sung the role under the composer. Only then did Langdon first understudy Ochs at Glyndebourne, and when he finally played it at Covent Garden in 1960 all the work paid off, in an acclaimed characterisation which took him around the world - not least to Vienna itself, where an initially incredulous and conservative public ("how can an Englishman play Ochs in proper Viennese dialect?") ended up giving him standing ovations and taking him to heart.

So you're right: many do take the generalised approach, like Gheorghiu and Alagna in Massenet - but there are still those around who have the determination to do things properly, and it always pays off. I would say Jonas Kaufmann is one example amongst today's singers who is insistent on taking his time before adding one of the "Everest" roles to his roster.

[Master Jacques]

... It must be very difficult to compare a dozen or more recordings of a full-length opera in 45-50 minutes, but instead of spending so much time looking at the pastiche aspects of the score it would have been profitable to look at some of the ensemble requirements of the work - which are pretty exacting - and where Monteux's cast win hands down.

Well put, on both counts. The supporting cast, ensemble work and all-important sense of stylistic rightness are the features which put the Monteux performance in a class by itself, but it is difficult when you only have 50 minutes to work with. Like you, I didn't feel Flora Willson was always the "honest broker", though, with the Pappano set given indulgences too often for comfort.

Though I must confess that when I went to have a look on Amazon at what was available, I was surprised to see so very few "complete" recordings currently available, at least on CD (there are more on DVD). Certainly that 1951 French set under Wolff deserves a modern mastering and proper distribution: like HighlandDougie I suspect the cheap CD set may be a dodgy pirate from LP.

[verismissimo]

Welcome to Bobinet, and very belated welcome to Master Jacques. Both real bonuses for the relatively rarer lovers of opera/song/singers on these boards.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Welcome to Bobinet, and very belated welcome to Master Jacques. Both real bonuses for the relatively rarer lovers of opera/song/singers on these boards.

- indeed so - particularly in respect to mid-late 19th Century French Opera. Excellent and interesting posts from both.

[Bergonzi]

Comparisons: Monteux and Pappano

Since the BAL review of Manon I have been listening to the Monteux recording and the Pappano version on line. They are really incredibly different recordings in every way. The problem for me is that the Pappano version has a kind of “summer haze” whereas the Monteux has a focussed and clear balance not only on the singers but also with the orchestral sound and balance. (More like an early Spring haze). I don’t know how much control Pappano would have had over the final outcome, but I suspect that “mix engineers” and “mastering engineers” may have had a lot of control over the final version. Pappano is a good musician, but who knows?

Then coming to the singing, De Los Angeles has a direct sound which is very pure, with central and unambiguous intonation, and this is also reflected with the other singers. On the other side of the coin, Gheorghiu in the Pappano recording has a much more vague central sound with an almost warble-like vibrato - and this adds to the sense of “summer haze.” (And uncertain pitch). Likewise the other members of the cast are in the same frame.

Listening to other recordings from the 1950-1960’s such as an albumof Ella Fitzgerald’s that I recently purchased, I am finding the same purity of sound and musical balance with an incredibly detailed backing band/orchestra. In those days (of the 1950”s/1960’s) recordings were made using ribbon mic’s and I’m sure it was the same with the Monteux Manon recording, as they were almost the only mic’s available.

In these days of virtually perfect digital recording I find there is a tendency for the sound to be over-processed with a lot of artificial reverb added as well as other even more dubious interferences from plugins that I personally can really do without. Modern mic’s are often hyped up and interfered with also, particularly the Large Diameter Capacitor mic’s popular with engineers and producers.

We seem to have come two steps forward and three steps back since those more purist ways of recording music, simply because we can, especially with the development of computers.

[Master Jacques]

Very interesting and informative post Bergonzi, thank you. I think it's rather like CGI in film and animation: somehow it doesn't quite feel right, compared against seeing huge numbers of real people in some of those 1950s and 1960s epics. I still thrill to seeing about half the Soviet Army seen going across screen in a haze of dust, during Ptushko's marvellous Ilya Muromets!

For myself, I have been revisiting the Plasson recording on EMI. Both Cotrubas and Kraus are memorably good, and the supporting cast (led by Gino Quilico and Jose van Dam) is every bit as communicative as Monteux's. The recording (early digital) is a bit two-dimensional and pallid in the current CD transfer, but you can hear everything clearly enough and Plasson manages the pace very well - if less luxuriantly than Monteux. If I had a doubt, it was whether the leading pair were really a vocal match: I felt Cotrubas might have meshed rather better with Monteux's youthful Henri Legay, and the noble, commanding Kraus with de los Angeles's heroine. We can but dream.... meanwhile, there are at least two very recommendable Manons in the catalogue.