ROSSINI: Guglielmo Tell**
Giuseppe Taddei (Guglielmo Tell), Rosanna Carteri (Matilde), Mario Filippeschi (Arnoldo), Giorgio Tozzi (Gualtiero), Plinio Clabassi (Melchtal), Graziella Sciutti (Jemmy), Miti Truccato Pace (Edvige), Fernando Corena (Gessler)
Turin RAI Chorus and Symphony Orchestra/Mario Rossi
Warner Fonit 8573 87489–2 (3 CDs) [Recorded November 13, 1951]
Here’s something I didn’t know existed—and having now heard it, I understand why it slipped through the historiographical cracks. This 1951 Guillaume Tell under Mario Rossi predates by five years the familiar Cetra release with Fischer-Dieskau, and while it offers compensations (considerable ones, actually), the sonic brutality tests even a seasoned collector’s tolerance for “historical” sound.
Let’s be blunt. The engineering is appalling even by early-1950s Italian radio standards. Voices thrust forward with that peculiar Cetra stridency—bright, cutting, almost aggressive in their immediacy—while the orchestra recedes into a boxy acoustic fog, all treble glare and virtually no bass foundation. There’s audible wow in the orchestral passages. My first instinct, frankly, was to reach for the stop button. But then—curious thing—I tried headphones, expecting the worst, and found the sound paradoxically more tolerable, less assaultive. My wife, listening from another room, reported no distress whatever. So: caveat emptor, but perhaps not impossibly so.
Once past the sonic barrier, though, rewards emerge. Rossi’s conducting captures something we’ve mostly lost: that pre-war Italian orchestral culture where morbidezza wasn’t a pejorative but an ideal. Those portamento-laden cellos opening the Prelude sound impossibly dated now, yet there’s poetry in their unashamed sentiment. And when Rossi launches the shepherd’s song (“Accours dans ma nacelle”), he achieves something genuinely affecting—swift in tempo but free in phrasing, the kind of paradox only an experienced opera director manages. This was Rossi at 49, freshly installed as the RAI Turin’s artistic director after declining La Scala on Toscanini’s recommendation. You hear his authority immediately.
The orchestral playing itself swings between extremes. Horn security? Forget it—this is 1951 Italian brass, gloriously fallible. But the string ensemble in faster passages crackles with vitality, and when Rossi wants attack—as in the tremendous ensemble following “Resta immobile“—he gets whiplash precision. The 1956 recording, made with the RAI Milan forces, sounds more generalized, less distinctive. This earlier document catches Rossi with his orchestra, and the difference matters.
Giuseppe Taddei, then 45 and on the cusp of his Met debut, offers Guglielmo with mature authority. He lacks Fischer-Dieskau’s lieder-singer’s textual refinement (who doesn’t?), but his assumption strikes me as more idiomatically Italian—the legato broad and sustained, the dramatic declamation rooted in Verdi rather than Schubert. It’s a “normal” interpretation, if you will, but executed at the highest level. Fischer-Dieskau remains extraordinary, almost sui generis; Taddei gives us what a first-rate Italian baritone of that generation could do with the role, which is plenty.
The revelation here is Rosanna Carteri’s Matilde. She was twenty-one. Twenty-one! Already a professional for several years (she began vocal studies at ten, made her debut at nineteen), Carteri would sing Desdemona at Salzburg the following summer and eventually inspire Poulenc to write Gloria for her. Then something happened—by the 1960s her intonation grew unreliable, and she faded from view. But here? The voice rings with youthful splendor, absolutely secure throughout the treacherous coloratura, the high notes gleaming without strain. She and Anita Cerquetti (who took the role in 1956) both suffered from Callas’s overwhelming presence; in another era, either might have dominated. This Matilde alone justifies the set’s existence.
Mario Filippeschi handles Arnoldo’s notorious difficulties with technical ease and considerable musicality—he never quite reached “great” status, but this is distinguished work. Having Giorgio Tozzi and Fernando Corena in relatively small roles constitutes luxury casting (both were well-established by 1951), while Plinio Clabassi and Miti Truccato Pace deliver the reliability one expects from RAI veterans. And there’s the young Graziella Sciutti as Jemmy, singing heavier repertoire than she’d later undertake—fascinating to hear that silvery voice in a fuller context.
The text? Heavily cut, following the traditional performing version that prevailed until Gardelli, Chailly, and Muti began their reassessments in the 1980s. We know better now—Rossini’s final opera deserves more complete presentation. But judging this interpretation by 1951 standards rather than imposing our current scholarly orthodoxies, Rossi’s cuts follow time-honored practice.
So where does this leave us? Certainly not as a first recommendation—the Muti, Chailly, or even the Gardelli would serve better for anyone wanting to know the opera. The 1956 Cetra, despite its own sonic limitations and largely forgettable supporting cast, offers Fischer-Dieskau’s irreplaceable Guglielmo. But for collectors interested in Italian performance practice of the early 1950s, for admirers of Taddei’s art, and especially for anyone curious about Carteri’s brief, brilliant prime, this document holds real value. Warner’s transfer appears to be straight, unprocessed—probably wise, given how easily digital manipulation can deaden old recordings further.
A specialized release, then, but one with genuine rewards for those willing to meet it on its own terms.
