This live performance of 1939 reminds us what we have lost and gained in performing Verdi—and perhaps all opera. You won't find here much of the refined musicality and good manners attendant on most studio recordings today; you will find a vibrant immediacy of expression, a peculiarly Italianate vitality, based on performing the work in hand as heightened speech. The words are here very much part of the music's texture and the three Italian principals 'speak' them as though their lives depended on communicating the essence of the drama. That was something Callas, a more intelligent Violetta than Caniglia, brought to full fruition, but her predecessor, not much liked by contemporary observers, or indeed by more recent critics of the voice, does have the vocal wherewithal for the part. Nothing in it extends her beyond her natural possibilities, no hint of strain is shown. She can be wild and subjective in her vocal deportment as though she were singing Tosca rather than Violetta. But I would rather have such wholehearted commitment, meaning that she communicates Violetta's love and suffering, than a more faceless portrayal immaculately read. Above all, like Ponselle on her live recording (Pearl, 1/89), Caniglia conveys a highly-strung, mortally stricken woman who feels everything to the depth of her being.
She is at her most affecting in the scene with Germont pere, and no wonder when she is singing opposite an artist of Basiola's calibre. It will be for his singing that I shall most often return to this set. ''Pura siccome'' has been honed over the years—he was 46 by this time—to perfection, the words sitting lightly and keenly on the purely produced tone, the legato unbroken but flexible. Throughout this scene you sense a baritone who has thought about every phrase, every note, every word and one who reacts with just the right feeling to Violetta's unexpected generosity. Then at ''Dite alla giovane'' Caniglia repays her partner's sensitivity in kind with her own finely moulded and tender line. It is a thousand pities that a damaged acetate means that Basiola's ''Di Provenza'' is missing.
Most will want this set for Gigli and his name is emblazoned on the jewel-case. They will not be disappointed; neither was I. Here, as in his studio Cavaradossi, Rodolfo and Riccardo, is another singer who treats his music with the utmost individuality, sometimes careless in time values, sometimes nudging and vocally winking in the old familiar way, but always thinking about what he is singing; all this is heard at its most potent perhaps near the beginning in his verse of ''Libiamo'' and near the end at ''O mio sospiro e palpito'', where the line is gently caressed. Then, at ''A strazio si terribil'', he pulls out all the stops and we realize just how refulgent his tenor must have been in the theatre. Once more everything is felt from the heart and goes to it. Bravo!
All three principals must have been encouraged by the attentive and thought through conducting of Gui, who is just sufficiently indulgent to his singers when need be, but otherwise keeps a firm hand on the proceedings, ably supported by the LPO's shining performance—the Act 3 Prelude lovingly done. Norman Walker's sympathetic Doctor stands out among the support. The customary cuts of the day are made. Sad to tell, the sound-quality is pretty poor, with just a few moments of enlightenment, one of them being at ''Parigi, o cara'', which Gigli launches in a matchless mezza voce.'