Berlioz Mort de Cleopatre (Norman, Barenboim)
- From: "david7gable@xxxxxxx" <david7gable@xxxxxxx>
- Date: 5 Nov 2005 21:19:15 -0800
Don't ask me why, since I already own four recordings, three of which I
especially like, but I just picked up Barenboim's DG recording of
Berlioz's La mort de Cleopatre with Jessye Norman and the Orchestre de
Paris. I had this on LP (released 1982) coupled with a tepid Nuits
d'ete with Kiri te Kanawa and the same orchestra and conductor, but I
haven't listened to it in many years. (Somebody has just listed a CD
reissue of the original compilation at eBay. I picked up the Cleopatre
at Berkshire coupled with a 1979 Fantastique with the same conductor
and orchestra.)
I've been underwhelmed by almost all of Barenboim's recorded Berlioz,
of which there's quite a lot including such comparative rarities as the
Te Deum and a complete Beatrice et Benedict, but he's very effective
here, no Munch- or Markevitch-like firebrand, to be sure, but not so
"relaxed and gentlemanly" as to vitiate all intensity and momentum. In
too many of the movements in his recording of Beatrice, he seems to be
on automatic pilot, but he's much more involved here, shaping with
considerable distinction.
Fortunately, the self-confessed francophile Miss Norman is
temperamentally a good fit for the role of Cleopatra and vocally
resplendent this time out, if not entirely free and open up top at a
couple of points (not that I care). If you like Norman at all, you'll
like her performance here. Not entirely comfortable with the unashamed
directness and comparative vulgarity of Italian opera, which she's
mostly avoided after some early Aida's, Norman's better suited to
Berlioz's Romanticism disguised as Neoclassicism. Frankly appraising
her own culpability in her own fate, Berlioz's Cleopatra pulls together
her dignity in an extremely effective and convincing scene. (It's not
some hack librettist but the lady herself who thought up the business
with the asp.) Less of a spitfire than three of my other Cleopatra's
in extremis, Norman does Cleopatra's dignity very well. Whether or not
a francophone purist would approve of her every utterance, Norman
enunciates her words with great care and sympathy. Her reading is a
patrician and musicianly one by no means lacking in passion. It may
not displace any of my three abiding favorites, but I'm certainly going
to hang on to it. (Norman does have more sheer voice than her rivals,
Jennie Tourel with Bernstein, Anne Pashley with Colin Davis, and Nadine
Denize with Gilbert Amy..)
-david gable
.
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