Donizetti Lucia di Lammermoor – Scotto at La Scala

A Mad Scene for the Ages

This 1959 La Scala Lucia has circulated among collectors for decades, and Pristine Audio’s restoration makes clear why it has retained such a grip on the imagination. The performance catches Renata Scotto near the beginning of her remarkable career—she was barely twenty-five—and the voice is still a thing of wonder. Pure, focused, spinning out with that particular silvery sheen that would become her calling card.

But it’s not just the voice. It’s what she does with it.

Scotto’s “Il dolce suono” unfolds with an almost improvisatory freedom that seems to discover the music anew. The flute dialogue—how many times have we heard this?—becomes genuinely conversational, not the usual display piece where soprano and woodwind take turns showing off. She shapes phrases with an interior logic that suggests she’s living through Lucia’s fracture in real time, and when she floats those high pianissimos, they emerge not as mere technical feats but as emanations from some unreachable distance. The coloratura, all those runs and trills that can sound like empty virtuosity, carries dramatic weight. This is bel canto singing that refuses to separate beauty from meaning.

Giuseppe Di Stefano is here in glorious voice—this is 1959, remember, before the instrument began its troubling decline. That honeyed tenor sound, so Italianate, so utterly lacking in Nordic chill. His “Fra poco a me ricovero” in the final scene has the kind of lyric ardor that makes you understand why this role became such a vehicle for tenors who could actually sing it, not just bark through it. The soft singing is particularly fine, though he does push a bit in the cabaletta. But then, who doesn’t?

Ettore Bastianini brings his burnished baritone and considerable dramatic authority to Enrico. Listen to how he colors the word “tremar” in the first act—there’s genuine menace there, not just vocal display. He and Scotto create real tension in their confrontations; you believe these are siblings locked in a fatal struggle over honor, money, and power. The voice itself is magnificent, that particular Italian baritone sound that seems to have vanished from the earth.

The supporting cast is more than adequate. Ivo Vinco’s Raimondo has the requisite gravity, though the voice lacks a certain tonal allure. Franco Ricciardi’s Arturo is… well, he gets through it.

Nino Sanzogno conducts with idiomatic flair and a keen sense of dramatic pacing. He doesn’t linger excessively—this is lean Donizetti, not the inflated sort that treats every phrase as if it were Verdi. The La Scala orchestra plays with characteristic warmth, though the strings could use more bite in the storm music. The chorus sounds magnificent, as they should in their own house.

The release itself presents the usual challenges of a live performance from this era. Pristine Audio has worked its customary magic, clarifying textures and opening up the soundstage without destroying the essential character of the original. You can hear hall ambience, the occasional shuffle, even—if you listen carefully—a distant cough during the sextet. These aren’t flaws. They’re evidence of music-making that happened in space and time, with real people breathing the same air.

This isn’t the most “complete” Lucia on disc—cuts are observed, as was standard practice then. But completeness isn’t everything. What matters is whether the rendition captures something essential about the work, whether it makes a case for why we should care about this tale of Scottish melodrama filtered through Italian sensibility.

It does. Scotto alone would justify the release, but the overall level of music-making is high enough to make this a primary recommendation for anyone who wants to hear what bel canto opera sounded like when singers still understood that artistry serves expression, not the other way around. Essential.