Di Stefano

[Michel]

"When Di Stefano sings his heart out, he sings naively, without the slightest reserve or trace of self-consciousness and the most total conviction." - someone from a google group

Great description! I love the purity, the innocence of his singing; its ring is simply divine. He is quickly becoming my favourite tenor, aided - no doubt - by the fact that he is involved in so many bloody good recordings too!

Anyone else a fan?

[Josquin des Prez]

Di Stefano is my mother's maiden name. I wonder if he's related to the family. 

[knight66]

Michel, Here we part company. I have never understood or connected with him. I find him quite a crude singer and I just don't 'get' his voice.

Mike

[Michel]

Michel, Here we part company. I have never understood or connected with him. I find him quite a crude singer and I just don't 'get' his voice.

Mike

Thats cos your'e not niave enough.

[Larry Rinkel]

Michel, Here we part company. I have never understood or connected with him. I find him quite a crude singer and I just don't 'get' his voice.

Mike

A lot depends on when you're hearing him, and in what kind of role. He's superb in the 1955 Elisir d'Amore with Hilde Gueden under Molinari-Pradelli. Already the 1951 Verdi Requiem with Toscanini finds him straining somewhat with a heavier role. Reliable sources have told me Manrico is too heavy a role for him, and the voice declined precipitously by the 1960s. But this is the tenor Pavarotti modelled himself after, and in his prime there was no sweeter and more lyrical voice.

[Anne]

Thanks, Larry, for that info.  Didn't know that about Pavarotti. 

[zamyrabyrd]

Michel, Here we part company. I have never understood or connected with him. I find him quite a crude singer and I just don't 'get' his voice.

I sort of agree, depending on what he was singing. Callas sang a lot with him and even did a redux concert tour with him in the early 70's (both past their primes). I get the impression that he was overdoing it a lot of the time and maybe that's why he had a relatively short career. So he may have been more lyrico and should have stayed that way, instead of insisting on roles like Pagliacci. Maybe it was a macho thing. If Pavarotti modeled himself after him, at least he was more suited for dramatic singing.

One of his worst moments was screeching out a high C in the recorded version of La Boheme competing with Callas at the end of the first act. Every tenor seems to want to do it but it is simply not in the score. (To avoid it requires a REALLY unyielding conductor who knows his stuff.) The above the staff C of the soprano is supposed to waft away into the night air not compete with a goat-like bleat in petto from the tenore.

ZB

[Michel]

Mike knows those Callas recordings all too well, no doubt, Larry. But your other point about doing lighter roles is undoubtedly true, and it is exactly within those works where I focus my listening.

[Larry Rinkel]

Mike knows those Callas recordings all too well, no doubt, Larry. But your other point about doing lighter roles is undoubtedly true, and it is exactly within those works where I focus my listening.

A friend of mine has suggested that none of the Callas recordings reflects DiStefano as he was in his youthful prime. Anything past 1955 or so of his is probably suspect.

[Tsaraslondon]

I find my feelings about Di Stefano depend on the role, and, sometimes, it would seem, my mood. He was never a particularly elegant singer, in the way that Bjoerling, for instance, could be, but he always sings with such face. I only really know the recordings he did with Callas, and it is always noticeable how he could be cavalier with the notes and the music, while investing his roles with real feeling and character. His technique was obviously sketchy. Top notes could often be tight and tense, as in that squawked top C ZB mentions at the end of Act I of Boheme, but would ever so often ring out free and true. That he could move an audience to near delirium is evident from some of the live performances with Callas; the Berlin/Karajan Lucia, and the La Scala/Gavazzeni Ballo, to name but two, both superior to their studio counterparts. Karajan, in particular, inspires him to sing with musicality and finesse in almost every bar, and he receives a rapturous reception from the Berlin audience at the end of his final scene. Interestingly, he seems to be at his best when inspired by better conductors, like De Sabata, Karajan and Serafin. With lesser conductors he could resort to crude mannerisms.

However, I doubt, if, even in his youth, the voice was ever quite as freely produced as that of Pavarotti, or had the ease on high of his successor. I would liken him more to Carreras, a lovely lyric tenor, who pushed his voice into heavy repertoire, that probably did him as much harm as his later illness. I was listening only the other day to his Gabriele Adorno in Abbado's Simon Boccanegra, which is gloriously sung, with a voice of arresting beauty. What happened to that Carreras? It is interesting to note that two of Carreras's most successful recorded roles (Cavaradossi in the Davis Tosca and Edgardo in the Fruhbeck de Burgos Lucia) were also two of Di Stefano's best roles.

[Larry Rinkel]

I'll upload, in WMA format, two brief excerpts from his 1955 Una furtiva lagrima:

[Larry Rinkel]

Of course, the high notes, stamina, and volume required for this role are considerably less than for Manrico, etc.

[Michel]

More really interesting posts as usual, thanks guys.

Larry - very interested to hear that 55, but even more interested to hear the even older stuff, given your friend's comment.

Just to clarify, the recordings I have been hearing him in are:

1953 Tosca, with Callas (Sabata)
1953 Cavalleria Rusticana, with Callas (Serafin)
1955 Lucia di Lammermoor, with Callas (Karajan)

I have just received the following, which I bought for Price, but I can also compare:

1963 Tosca, with Price (Karajan)

[Michel]

It is during these moments that I am regretting burning all my music into lossless format. I would like to share some sound clips, only three minutes is about 16mb...

I will compress a couple when I work out how to do it and get them on here...

[knight66]

I am very happy to accept that I am probably listening to him in the wrong roles and at the wrong time in his recording career. Like ZB, I all to often feel the tone is constricted and that he is pushing.

But of all the major voice types, tenor is the one I am least connected with. Very few tenors keep me happy, so I can quite understand it is more about my taste than about the qualities of the singers.

The tenors I really listen to are

Bjoerling, Vickers, Wunderlich, Melchior, Corelli.

Mike

[Tsaraslondon]

The tenors I really listen to are

Bjoerling, Vickers, Wunderlich, Melchior, Corelli.

Mike

Mike, the odd one out here to me is Corelli. The first four had voices of great individuality, and were also wonderfully musical artists. Corelli, though gifted with a splendid instrument, often mauled the music to death, introducing unmannerly sobs and aspirates all over the place, a million miles away from the beauty and musicality of a singer like Bjoerling. Oddly enough, though, his Pollione on the second Callas Norma is sung with great nobility and is often very stylish. Did Serafin have something to do with this? I have a double CD set of him singing various arias and songs, taken from different complete sets and recitals, but I can only really listen to it in small doses, as he over sentimentalises almost everything he sings.

[knight66]

TL, I am no Corelli expert. I did once have a recital CD on EMI and I never got to the end of it. But I do have him in Tosca, Aida, Turandot and best of all Don Carlos. He acquits himself well in all of those. Perhaps a variable singer. I do like the sound of his voice and although I can see Domingo is a greater singer, I simply don't connect with him. I omitted the young Pavarotti. In latter years I have been quite irritated with the way he milked his career and used venues where he was put through a sound system, but on the day of his death, I heard on radio extracts of a number of his best recordings. I had forgotten how beautiful his voice was.

Mike