The recent book on Franco Corelli by Marina Boagno (published in English by Baskerville, USA; 1996) lists no less than nine ‘unofficial’ labels through which this recording has already been made available. Only now has it been received into the official canon, by incorporation into the latest release-list of EMI’s Callas Edition; and the quality is certainly an improvement on the Rodolphe LPs by which I myself previously knew the work. The sound is clear and faithful to the timbre of the voices, which are slightly favoured in the balance at the expense of the orchestra. The theatre’s acoustic tends to sound boxy on record, but that at least helps definition and does nothing to disguise the raw edge that in some of her more strenuous passages was likely by then to have become notable in Callas’s voice. With it comes unforgettable testimony to what was clearly a great night at La Scala.
Its place in the Callas history owes less to the importance of this new role in her repertory than to the triumph of her return to the house she had left in high dudgeon in 1958. The part of Paolina in this Roman tragedy is restricted in opportunities and leaves the centre of the stage to the tenor. In other ways it suits her remarkably well, the Second Act in particular involving the heroine in grievous emotional stress with music that here runs deep enough to give it validity. In the first scene of that act she has a duet with the baritone in which her solo (“Ei non vegga il pianto mio”) has a tenderness she knew so well to depend on the right, instinctively judicious use of portamento. Later, in the Temple scene, her every utterance has its beauty or intensity or both, and the whole company rises with her to the inspired climax of Donizetti’s score.
For this is, to a surprising extent, a company-opera. There is a big part for the chorus, who sing with fine Italian sonority. Nicola Zaccaria, La Scala’s leading basso cantabile, has not quite the sumptuous quality of his predecessors, Pasero and Pinza, but is still in their tradition, singing with authority in his number with chorus in Act 3. Ettore Bastianini is rapturously received and, though wanting in polish and variety of expression, uses his firm and resonant voice to exciting effect. The tenor comprimario Piero de Palma cuts a by no means inadequate vocal figure by the side of Corelli, who, for the most part, is stupendous. Harold Rosenthal, writing in Opera (January 1961), reported a “magnificent virile tenor voice” but “an inartistic and sometimes vulgar performance”. The recording tells a different tale: it is not just the ring and range of voice that impress, but a genuinely responsive art, his aria “Lasciando la terra” in Act 3 providing a fine example. It is for his part in the opera, quite as much as for Callas’s, that the recording will be valued.'