Regina Resnik "Dramatic Scenes & Arias".(the CD contains works by Bizet, Saint-Saens, Verdi, J. Strauss, Lehar, Wright, Forrest, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, R. Strauss)(Sound Recording Review)

By Bizet, Saint-Saens, Verdi, J. Strauss, Lehar, Wright, Forrest, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, R. Strauss. Various orchestras, Downes, Schippers, Solti, Bonynge, Karajan, Mantovani. No texts or translations. Decca 475 017/018 (2)

The best years of Regina Resnik's long mezzo-soprano career coincided with the two decades of Rudolf Bing's regime at the Met, but Bing didn't really favor her, and some of Resnik's best roles went to other mezzos. This didn't keep Resnik from pursuing a highly successful international career, with London, Vienna, Bayreuth and Milan among her significant venues. She also recorded prodigiously, and this two-CD set not only attests to the diversity of the artist's repertory but suggests her powerful stage presence. The selections are wide-ranging (1960-77) and derive from different sound sources, with overall results that are impressive but uneven.

Resnik is heard in French, Italian, German and Russian operas, and she displays an idiomatic mastery, stylistically and linguistically, in all of them. Resnik never sang Dalila onstage, which is a pity, considering her subtly seductive and unexaggerated "Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix." She was, of course, a celebrated Carmen, and the first four Carmen selections on CD 1 come from a long-unavailable London LP (OS 25316), recorded in 1960 under Edward Downes, illuminating her imperious and stage-wise Gypsy. The card scene, in particular, is rich in interpretive nuance and strongly conducted (though, because the original LP was a solo recital, this lacks the presence of Frasquita and Mercedes for the full ensemble). In the final scene, recorded three years later, as part of the complete opera under Thomas Schippers, the powerful mezzo finds her tonal and temperamental match in Mario Del Monaco, but his French is atrocious.

Among the four Verdi scenes, I found the "Reverenza" episode from Falstaff the most enjoyable, with the delicious interplay between Resnik's wicked Mistress Quickly (her most frequently essayed Met role) and Fernando Corena's pompous Falstaff. Her Azucena aria ("Condotta ell'era in ceppi") is ...