VOICES FROM THE PAST

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 928, 24 May 1957, Page 11

VOICES FROM THE PAST

Sir,-In his article under the above heading Mr Owen Jensen wrote: "If you like passionate Italian tenors complete with sob in ‘Vesti la Giubba’ . .. I don’t think I would have liked Signor Zenatello even in his heyday." Unless Mr Jensen is completely cold-blooded I feel sure his surmise is wrong, When one absorbs opera per medium of the radiogram it is so easy to be a little cynical of such artifices as "the Caruso sob," but when we go to the opera we expect to see as well as to hear fullblooded drama or comedy, not a mere recital, In the Golden Age a vocalist aspiring to operatic honours was expected to display some knowledge of the histrionic art, to act with some conviction the role he or she was singing, and I doubt if any man ever portrayed the personality of Don Jose more vividly than did Zenatello. I heard and saw him in the role three, perhaps four times, and I was never more moved than by his rendering of "La fleur que tu m’avais jetée," not forgetting Caruso’s "Vesti la Giubba." In the last few moments of Carmen his acting and singing thrilled the audience. On one occasion the Carmen, although a commanding mezzo voice, was "a stick" as regards acting, but Zenatello terrified the poor woman into realistic simulation of a cornered victim frantically endeavouring to dodge the assassin’s knife. I have not heard a recording of Zenatello and cannot recall having seen him in I Pagliacci, though I saw Caruso as Canio several times. How he used to revel in the role! The horrified realisation of the crime he had committed, his despair and grief for all that he had lost, as expressed by Caruso in those final spoken words, "La Commedia e Finita!" is something I still marvel at after fifty years. When listening to "canned" opera we should visualise the scene and action, then an occasional sob may not soun out of place. ;

F. C.

ARMSTRONG

(Auckland).