Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Puccini: Edgar

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

You're wrong if you think all of Giacomo Puccini's operas are in the international standard operatic repertoire. Even after Puccini made major revisions in the score over a period of fifteen years, Edgar (1889), his second operatic essay, never made it into the canon of his works. Its premiere at La Scala was a failure, due no doubt to a preposterous libretto. Yet the music audibly displays the melodic genius of this composer in its earliest flowering. In radio broadcast you can forget about the romantic absurdities of the plot and concentrate on some glorious singing. Edgar has had its supporters, one of whom is discerning music critic Raymond Tuttle.

There were at least four commercial recordings of Edgar made over a period of several decades up to the end of the twentieth century. One rare revival of Edgar took place in a concert performance at Carnegie Hall in New York City. This was the world premiere of the complete opera on stereo LP discs, made in 1977 for Columbia Masterworks. Comparing the singing casts of three live-in-performance recordings and one single studio taping, Raymond Tuttle concludes that the oldest one from Carnegie Hall is the best. Operatic superstars tenor Carlo Bergonzi and soprano Renata Scotto "...squeeze the last drops of juice out of the score..." (Fanfare magazine, Jan/Feb, 2007). Eve Queler directed the Opera Orchestra of New York. I last broadcast the Columbia Masterworks Edgar on Sunday, September 9, 2007, and before that on Sunday, May 22, 1988. I will spin those same old vinyl platters again today.