‘Visceral’ is the word that most immediately comes to mind whenever I think of Rockwell Blake. His critics may bitch away to their hearts’ content but on stage he can be a terrific asset. The combination of a brilliant, peculiarly penetrating tenor voice, a prodigiously flexible technique and a Mario Lanza-like allure may be something of a mongrel mix but the effect can be electrifying. There are not many con slancio markings in Rossini (it was more Puccini’s line) but, taken in small doses, Rossini con slancio is a potent tipple.
Small doses is the operative phrase here. Despite frequent cooling drafts of plain water in the form of one of the many (too many) settings Rossini made of Metastasio’s Mi lagnero tacendo, Blake’s jack-in-the-box style can be just as wearing as Rossini’s sameness of musical gesture in some of these songs from the 1830s (the Soirees musicales), 1840s and the years of the Peches de vieillesse (Paris, 1857-68).
The truth is, record companies have yet to get a grip on late Rossini. There is a lot of wonderful music here, for solo piano as well as for voice; but it needs programming with taste and discretion. The mix needs to be right; and where vocal items are concerned this almost certainly means bringing together a veritable Songmaker’s Almanac of artists, such as would have performed at Rossini’s own soirees in Paris. (By way of a start, you would think the catalogue would be bursting at the seams with complete recordings of the popular Soirees musicales. But now that the Nimbus recording – 12/88 – has been deleted there is nothing.)
In the end, this latest anthology is too much of a muchness to make for satisfactory listening. It is a trap Cecilia Bartoli and her producers fall into on a not dissimilar Decca CD (4/91). But at least Rockwell Blake is never dull. After Bartoli’s mousy and verbally blurred rendition of Nizza, Blake is a revelation, wonderfully communicative, with first-rate diction. Even his obviously wayward account of La danza is fun, a good deal more colourful than Raul Gimenez’s classically correct account on Nimbus where the pianist Nina Walker sounded as though she was playing in the next block along. EMI’s Antonio Pappano plays with relish and is recorded with refreshing prominence.
The famous “Cat Duet” (not by Rossini, though a piece it is reasonable to think he might have found quite amusing) is included at the end of the disc, as a ‘selling point’ no doubt. The famous 1967 de los Angeles/Schwarzkopf version with Gerald Moore (now on EMI Eminence) is not surpassed. But having the duet performed by a pair of warring toms (the alto cat neutered, it must be assumed) will no doubt earn it a following. The performance is as camp as Christmas and may, indeed, make something of a commercial killing at the raunchier end of the Christmas bazaar.'