"INAUGURAL CONCERT OF THE RECONSTRUCTED LA SCALA, MAY 11, 1946".(Review)

Arturo Toscanini et al. [] "INAUGURAL CONCERT OF THE RECONSTRUCTED LA SCALA, MAY 11, 1946" Excerpts from La Gazza Ladra, Guglielmo Tell, Mose Nabucco, I Vespri Siciliani, Manon Lescaut, Mefistofele; Verdi Te Deum. With Favero, Tebaldi, Gardino; Malipiero, Pasero, Stabile, Nessi, Forti; La Scala Chorus and Orchestra, Toscanini. Italian and Latin texts only. Arkadia 78598 (2) (Qualiton, dist.)

The return of Arturo Toscanini to reopen La Scala after World War II was a powerfully emotional and symbolic event. Two and a half years earlier, the theater had been heavily damaged by Allied bombs. Toscanini, at odds with the Mussolini government, had been in exile from his homeland since 1938. To many present at the concert here recorded, including several of the singers who had worked there with him, and the reinstated chorus master, Vittore Veneziani, Toscanini embodied the best spirit of the theater he had last headed in the late 1920s.

Even for its period, the radio sound of this broadcast is primitive and variable. At its worst, in the opening overture to Rossini's La Gazza Ladra, it is plagued by a relentless munching noise. But much of what follows is easier on the ear, and Arkadia has done its best to restore the source material. Not much can be done about the monitoring of the volume level (boosting where quiet, blasting where loud), but the pitches of the selections have been corrected. (On an earlier CD of this concert, SRO-802, and an LP edition, HRE 243, La Gazza Ladra is a whole tone too low.) Where the pitch varies somewhat during the course of a selection, as in the Mefistofele prologue (nearly half a tone sharp at "Salve Regina!"), technical interference would be too chancy, and ...