- Orchestra: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
- Conductor: Herbert von Karajan
- Composer: Giuseppe Verdi
- Audio CD (15 Jun 1998)
- SPARS Code: ADD
- Number of Discs: 2
- Label: Deutsche Grammophon
- ASIN: B0000012WQ
- Other Editions: MP3 Download
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 101,317 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Having listened to just about every recording of Il Trovatore available during the last 50 years this recording comes as close to perfection as one can get. It is powerful, exciting and full of spine tingling moments. The fact that it is live adds a dimension of realism to it that is simply not in studio recordings. This is the dream team in every respect, with all the singers at the peak of their games turning in performances that testify to their magnificent careers. We do not hear this sort of singing any more, opera stars of today can't hold a candle to these demi-gods of yesteryear.
I am thrilled to have this recording in my library along with another 11 recordings of this opera - this set is by far my favourite!
I am thrilled to have this recording in my library along with another 11 recordings of this opera - this set is by far my favourite!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
This CD set is reasonably priced for what is an excellent recording. The set comes with a booklet about the recording and a separate libretto making it even better value. The recording is in mono but that doesn't really detract from the pleasure of listening to it. Considering that the recording is now 50 years old and a live recording then it stands up very well against other recordings of the period. There is some hiss but so little that it does not detract from the recording itself.
Herbert Von Karajan directs a group of the finest singers available at the time (or any time ever in the history of opera) Franco Corelli as Manrico, Giulietta Simionato as Azucena, Leontyne Price as Leonora and Ettore Bastianini as Il Conte di Luna. The quality could not be repeated by any assembled cast today.
Enrico Caruso once said that all it takes for successful performance of Il trovatore is the four greatest singers in the world; this recording is what he meant.
Herbert Von Karajan directs a group of the finest singers available at the time (or any time ever in the history of opera) Franco Corelli as Manrico, Giulietta Simionato as Azucena, Leontyne Price as Leonora and Ettore Bastianini as Il Conte di Luna. The quality could not be repeated by any assembled cast today.
Enrico Caruso once said that all it takes for successful performance of Il trovatore is the four greatest singers in the world; this recording is what he meant.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
This performance has been in and out of the catalogues for the past 40 years, mostly from unauthorised, irregular or downright pirate sources, both in LP and CD, with sound quality levels that ranged from AM radio-type (as if taken from an air check) to fairly good. Now we have from DG the original ORF (the Austrian Broadcating Corp.) master tape and the gain in clarity and immediacy is significant, so much so as to amply justify the price differential (which is no great thing either as the set is mid-priced).
Forty years ago Karajan had established himself as Europe's "generalmusikdiktator" and assembled for this Salzburg Festival performance a starry cast quite tough to better, then as perhaps even now, effectively gathering the day's leading exponents of the roles. You would have quite hard a time then trying to find a tenor better suited than Franco Corelli to sing the part of Manrico, la Simionato would spring to anyone's mind as the logical choice for Azucena, and Bastianini sung the Count so well he could hardly be surpassed, even by Gobbi. Karajan's rapport with Leontyne Price was special, as John Culshaw wrote in his memoirs ("Putting the Record Straight", left unfinished by his untimely death but none the less published soon thereafter), and it shows throughout. Her spinto voice projects Leonore most effectively, in spite of her less-than-perfect italian diction, a head-on competitor to the then leading exponents of the part, la Callas or, specially, la Tebaldi. Culshaw also recounts Bastianini's fall from grace with Karajan whilst recording Otello in Vienna for Decca in 1962 and how he got Decca to sack him and replace him with Aldo Protti; the loss is posterity's, no doubt, but if differences between the two were already present by the time this Trovatore was staged, they don't show at all.
Karajan was a most intelligent operatic conductor, not just in the recording studio but in the theatre as well (and you'll be surprised to learn how often one does not necessarily imply the other), with a keen sense to find the tempo that was right for each particular singer and episode within a work (yet why in this particular ocasion he allowed Corelli to croon his way out of "Ah si ben mio" and at so slow a tempo is beyond comprehension), which translates into a general sense of urgency throughout this Trovatore, stressing as few other conductors the score's inner drammatic tensions. By 1962 he had behind him a solid commercial recording of "Il Trovatore", made in Milan for EMI some six years earlier with La Scala forces and an altogether different cast (Callas, Di Stefano, Panerai and Barbieri in the leading roles) that had gathered laudatory remarks from critics the world over, and later on would still return to the work more than once, for both the stereo mikes and video, for no doubt Il Trovatore was a score special to him. This 1962 Salzburg recording being live, there are of course some imprecisions here and there, vocal perspectives tend to shift when stage movement brings a particular singer to face away from the microphone, there are stage noises, applause and slight miscues between orchestra players and singers which no doubt Karajan would have corrected had this been a regular, commercial studio project (but again, very likely at the price of spontaneity and frisson). But this is a Trovatore to treasure, a performance that amply demonstrates the success of a project in which an inspired conductor and a group accomplished and well cast singers can achieve. No matter how many Trovatore's you may own, add this one to your collection, you will not be disappointed.
Forty years ago Karajan had established himself as Europe's "generalmusikdiktator" and assembled for this Salzburg Festival performance a starry cast quite tough to better, then as perhaps even now, effectively gathering the day's leading exponents of the roles. You would have quite hard a time then trying to find a tenor better suited than Franco Corelli to sing the part of Manrico, la Simionato would spring to anyone's mind as the logical choice for Azucena, and Bastianini sung the Count so well he could hardly be surpassed, even by Gobbi. Karajan's rapport with Leontyne Price was special, as John Culshaw wrote in his memoirs ("Putting the Record Straight", left unfinished by his untimely death but none the less published soon thereafter), and it shows throughout. Her spinto voice projects Leonore most effectively, in spite of her less-than-perfect italian diction, a head-on competitor to the then leading exponents of the part, la Callas or, specially, la Tebaldi. Culshaw also recounts Bastianini's fall from grace with Karajan whilst recording Otello in Vienna for Decca in 1962 and how he got Decca to sack him and replace him with Aldo Protti; the loss is posterity's, no doubt, but if differences between the two were already present by the time this Trovatore was staged, they don't show at all.
Karajan was a most intelligent operatic conductor, not just in the recording studio but in the theatre as well (and you'll be surprised to learn how often one does not necessarily imply the other), with a keen sense to find the tempo that was right for each particular singer and episode within a work (yet why in this particular ocasion he allowed Corelli to croon his way out of "Ah si ben mio" and at so slow a tempo is beyond comprehension), which translates into a general sense of urgency throughout this Trovatore, stressing as few other conductors the score's inner drammatic tensions. By 1962 he had behind him a solid commercial recording of "Il Trovatore", made in Milan for EMI some six years earlier with La Scala forces and an altogether different cast (Callas, Di Stefano, Panerai and Barbieri in the leading roles) that had gathered laudatory remarks from critics the world over, and later on would still return to the work more than once, for both the stereo mikes and video, for no doubt Il Trovatore was a score special to him. This 1962 Salzburg recording being live, there are of course some imprecisions here and there, vocal perspectives tend to shift when stage movement brings a particular singer to face away from the microphone, there are stage noises, applause and slight miscues between orchestra players and singers which no doubt Karajan would have corrected had this been a regular, commercial studio project (but again, very likely at the price of spontaneity and frisson). But this is a Trovatore to treasure, a performance that amply demonstrates the success of a project in which an inspired conductor and a group accomplished and well cast singers can achieve. No matter how many Trovatore's you may own, add this one to your collection, you will not be disappointed.
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