Samuel Barber - Vanessa (Opera Op.32)

Samuel BARBER (1910-1981)

Vanessa Op.32

An Opera in Three Acts (1954-57; revised 1964)

Libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti

Christine Brewer, William Burden, Neal Davies, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Simon Birchall, Susan Graham, Stephen Charlesworth

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Leonard Slatkin

This new recording of Vanessa replaces even the excellent original 1958 set on RCA, let alone the not-bad, recent Naxos recording, as first choice. As fine and authentic as the RCA is (it's also of interest because it presents the opera's original version, without the 1964 revisions), here we get a recording so pristine and clear that almost every word can be understood--all the more important for an opera in which there are great subtleties in the characters' interactions. In addition, Susan Graham's performance of Erika here becomes the touchstone--conflicted, loving, angry--and tenor William Burden as Anatol is so smooth that it's easy to tell why both women fall for him. Christine Brewer's big-voiced Vanessa is splendid--listening to the ice in her voice melt away is just one fine aspect of her portrayal. Catherine Wyn-Rogers as the Old Baroness is properly imperious, and the rest of the cast is excellent. Leonard Slatkin leads the BBC forces with flexibility and a true understanding of the score's lyrical and tragic moments. Highly recommended. --Robert Levine

Review

Vanessa was the first world premiere of an American opera presented during the regime of Met general manager Rudolf Bing, and the first opera written by Samuel Barber (1910-81), whose orchestral compositions had won him celebrity while he was still in his twenties. Bing gave the piece a lavish production designed by Cecil Beaton and directed by composer Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007), who also provided the libretto. Barber considered opera collaborations with Thornton Wilder and Dylan Thomas during his early career, but he did not actually begin work on an opera until the early 1950s, when he received an offer of a libretto from Menotti, who was also his life partner. Their work on Vanessa progressed fitfully, stalled by Menotti's own flourishing composing career, until Barber delivered an ultimatum: he would not write another note until the full text of the opera was finished. The mysterious flavor of Menotti's storyline is influenced by Isak Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales, although it is not adapted from a specific Dinesen work. Barber took credit for the work's title, claiming to have named the central character out of a book called How to Name Your Child.

The role of Vanessa was offered first to Maria Callas, who declined it, and next to Croatian soprano Sena Jurinac, who accepted the assignment, only to withdraw from the production less than two months before the opera's world premiere, scheduled for January 15, 1958, with Greek-born maestro Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896-1960) on the podium. To fill the Vanessa gap, the Met called on the prodigiously talented American soprano Eleanor Steber (1914-90), who learned the opera in less than six weeks and proved to be ideally suited to Barber's capricious heroine. Vanessa's other female principals were mezzo Rosalind Elias (b. 1929), then in the fifth of her thirty-five seasons on the roster, who had a breakthrough success as Erika, and Regina Resnik (b. 1922), whose vivid Old Baroness was a milestone in her own thirty-season Met career. Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda (b. 1925), then in his Met debut season, was Vanessa's manipulative Anatol; Giorgio Tozzi (b. 1923), who had arrived at the Met in 1955, was the Old Doctor. Senior veteran in the Vanessa cast was its Nicholas, George Cehanovsky (1892-1986), whose forty-year Met career included the world premieres of The King's Henchman (1927), Peter Ibbetson (1931), Merry Mount (1934) and The Man Without a Country (1937).

...

The summer following the world premiere, Mitropoulos led most of the original cast in a Salzburg Festival run of the opera; the Salzburg performance of August 16, 1958, has been issued on CD by Orfeo d'Or. Like the RCA recording, the Salzburg performances used Barber's original, four-act version of the opera; the composer's 1964 three-act revision of Vanessa, which omits the title character's Act II skating aria and some other less significant music, was used as the basis for the superb Vanessa set recorded in concert in London in 2003 (Chandos), with Susan Graham and Christine Brewer as Erika and Vanessa. -- Opera News, January 2010