Carlo Bergonzi - La mia letizia infondere (Tokyo, 1987)

Carlo Bergonzi sings "La mia letizia infondere" from Verdi's opera I Lombardi. This was taped for Japanese television during Bergonzi's 1987 Tokyo recital.

[@numetutelare]

Un maestro del canto all'italiana... Ad onta di un timbro non eccelso ha una dinamica, delle messe di voce e dei passaggi di registro magistrali... Il suono è sempre, sempre coperto e fluido....

[@marcominelli2578]

Straordinario Bergonzi. Cantata con tempi lunghi. Stile unico. Il linguaggio di Verdi è recepito anche dai giapponesi, che non conoscono la lingua italiana. La musica è un linguaggio universale.

[@sugarbist]

Bergonzi is about 63 here.

[@Kievest]

A stunning interpretation of the role of a great warrior smitten by love! Thank you for posting this marvelous tutorial on how to be a truly great tenor. Phrasing and dynamics second to none!!! Bravo Bergonzi!!!

[@vepkhia]

Grande Bergonzi!

[@johannesbrahms7414]

Carlo Bergonzi projects, is, a "real man", who, at the same time, is a good, intrinsically honest person. This Persona, that his voice evoques, is one belonging to one who lacks malice and/or aggression to fellow Humans, but that of one who has "Values", "Principles", for which he is willing to "stand up", and even, fight, to defend himself as well as his "Sisters & Brothers in Humanity". He sounds to me, from his many recordings, to be an intelligent, fine, Gentleman, who is so kind, good-hearted, and, bright, as to, also, be "WOKE"! He is a most intelligent, subtle, deep, poetic Artist such as Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Christa Ludwig, Artur Schnabel, Jacqueline du Pre', Pablo Casals, Jascha Heifetz, et ali! He is a fine Role Model for Men, of all ages, and, Women, of all ages, by whom to be inspired! To boot, such fine, Human, Role Models, would eliminate any more---- WARS!

[@antonisonoufriou2734]

Sentite Luchetti come canta queste cose...

[@oscarluisviola1060]

Voz genial.

[@dmitrychernov5994]

Bergonzi is magnificent! But we should not forget about the pianist. To play with Bergonzi and to stay together is the same as flying a military jet - same amount of concentration... :)

[@antoniomarrone8978]

Apanhando nas notas altas.Eterno enganador.

[@evandrovilasboascardoso5757]

Antonio Marrone, não esqueça que neste recital Bergonzi já contava 63 anos de idade. As pregas vocais começam a envelhecer a partir dos 60 anos. Bergonzi, mais moderno, foi um mestre do "Raccoltto", como poucos na época. Apesar de cansaço neste recital, percebe-se, ainda, nesta apresentação, as qualidades de uma grande impostação vocal, uma das suas grandes virtudes. Mastigar os músculos da face é um dos ítens mais difíceis no canto lírico. Hoje, pouquíssimos professores estão conseguindo impostar as jovens vozes. Preocupante...

[@arepo]

I have never understood how Bergonzi came to be called tenore verdiano. Does anybody know how it had started? Was it the media? And why he and not other tenors?

[@arepo]

​@@MaxPower-cp5qi Thank you for your reply. I know the recordings you mentioned. I agree a Verdi tenor should have good diction. I do not agree Bergonzi had good diction with all those "sh." I do not agree elegance is a main requirement. I have seen a youtube comment quoting Verdi I will reproduce here: "So called vocal finesse means little to me. I like to have roles sung the way I like them, but I can't provide the voice, the temperament, the 'je ne sais quoi' that one might call the spark. It's what is usually understood by the phrase 'to be possessed by the devil' " Verdi was writing about Amneris, but I am sure this can be applied to tenor roles too, he wouldn't have demanded less fire from tenors than from a mezzosoprano. Verdi's words do not describe Bergonzi's style and temperament at all. I checked online to be sure the quote is not a fake and it comes from David Milsom's "Classical and Romantic Music". In the same book there is another quote about declamatory style: "It is necessary to have a soul of fire, a gigantic power; the actor must constantly dominate the singer." The second quote comes from Manuel Garcia, the XIX century belcanto pedagogue, same generation as Verdi, son of the other Manuel Garcia, the first Almaviva in Rossini's Barbiere. I do not confuse Verdi with verismo but I am of the opinion that "elegance" and being "possessed by the devil" are not synonyms, while "elegance" and "vocal finesse" are more related. Vocal homogeneity and color were not prized by XIX century composers and audiences as much as they had been by XVIII century pedagogues. Pasta and Malibran did not have same color throughout the range, yet Bellini and Donizetti were inspired by them, by their dramatic intensity and fire. Verdi required all sorts of octave leaps and while he may have preferred homogeneous voices for ingenue soprano roles (he liked Patti), he didn't consider vocal homogeneity the beginning and the end of the art form "Voice alone, however beautiful, is not enough." Anyway Bergonzi's voice was homogeneous only below the passagio but not above. Verdi score for tenors goes very often above the passagio and it requires a solid and well integrated top. Cutting through orchestration requires squillo. These are two "features" Bergonzi did not have IMO. So I'm still puzzled why he is called Verdi tenor and with whom the term had originated. Verdi and Garcia would not have agreed.

[@arepo]

@@MaxPower-cp5qi You misunderstood. The quote wasn't Milsom's personal opinion, he was quoting Verdi himself. I should think Verdi had not only read his own score, he had composed it. We should do him the courtesy of believing he knew what he was talking about because it was his own work, and he also lived through the period and understood it as no vocal armchair specialist born a century later could. I recall Verdi didn't like coloratura ingenues cast as Gilda. I do not understand the "to be possessed by the devil" from del Monaco's perspective, I said right from the beginning I do not confuse Verdi with verismo. I am afraid you took that "devil" too literally, it has nothing to do with devilish characters, in the quote it is used in the context of "spark". I do not confuse "spark" with bravura moments, and neither does Verdi. The spark is not about deliberately inserting a few bravura elements, the spark has a more permanent nature and it is related to vocal onstage temperament and priorities. If you read the bit about finesse more carefully you will realize that Verdi does not reject finesse outright, he just does not glorifies it for its academic sake alone. What he means to say is if academic elegance and "small scale" is the first thing that pops up in your mind when listening to a singer, he does not consider that singer suitable for his operas. Verdi is never small scale elegant chamber music because he didn't live around 1700, he lived through the Italian Risorgimento and post-Risorgimento. You should try to understand him in the context of his own time and how he broke with the tradition of the previous period in terms of technical demands and interpretative powers he demanded from singers. He wasn't called the composer with the helmet for nothing. I find it difficult to believe Celletti didn't understand this basic aspect. Can you link me to an online copy of the article or book where he says why he considers Bergonzi to be a Verdi tenor? If he did so I have a feeling he did select only one aspect that suited his argument but discarded the whole package.

[@arepo]

@@MaxPower-cp5qi I hold onto my opinion that Bergonzi's diction is far from perfect; perhaps you do not hear his "sh" where there should be none but I do. Constriction above the passagio makes a voice sound different in that part of the range and if a voice sounds different in any part of it, it means the voice is not homogeneous throughout the range; but as I said perfect homogeneity is not very important for XIX century operas. There are however various reasons why a voice isn't homogeneous, and some are less acceptable than others. It is not the same if the inhomogeneity is due to constriction which produces a weak, thin, and dry sound, or due to basic different color in a part of a range, that is the sound produced is still full and "round" but of a slightly different color. This is why constriction has a name, the sound is typical and it is the product of faulty technique. Having a natural slightly different color in a part of the range does not have a name.

[@arepo]

@@MaxPower-cp5qi I am not sure I understand the first of your two last replies. You did attribute the "finesse" quote to Milsom, not only the "devil", and now you seem to imply having the "spark" is the same thing as being Apollonian. This is not at all what I had meant but I don't know how I could say it better without repeating myself. Let's agree to disagree, particularly as I have the feeling it's not you and me disagreeing, it's Celletti and me disagreeing, your opinions seem all to be borrowed from Celletti. There's no use for me to argue with the opinions of a dead Italian passed down to me second hand in English by a Spaniard, misunderstandings are guaranteed.

[@arepo]

​@@MaxPower-cp5qi Here will address only your second reply. "Perfect" is a superlative. Superlatives are applied only to things out of the ordinary. You said Bergonzi's diction is "perfect". Your criteria for perfection is that his regional pronunciation is good enough for your Spanish ears. Let me set you straight on this. Native speakers with reasonable education are much more sensitive to nuance than foreigners. A foreigner's goal is just understand the language, with the more ambitious among them speaking enough words to get by, but for native speakers just understanding their own language isn't anything out of the ordinary, they can do this since they're 2 years old. For Italians there's a big difference between understandable Italian, and perfect Italian. I believe you when you say you are not Italian, because if you were you would know *for sure* in Parma they have indeed "something with the 'sh' " , but not "sh" instead of "sc" , it's "sh" instead of plain "s" particularly when followed by a vowel. Criteria for perfect Italian diction is NOT based on Emilia Romagna regional dialect. You may want to believe so as you wanted to believe Verdi's expectations were Milsom's personal opinions, as you wanted to believe I confuse Verdi with verismo, but your wanting to believe something doesn't make that something true. Criteria for perfect Italian diction is based on standard Italian pronunciation. I wouldn't use the word "perfect" myself because I don't hold with pompous superlatives, I prefer "clean". I expect Italian opera singers to sing clean standard Italian and reserve their dialect for the time they visit with their relatives. And when I'm listening to German singers performing German opera I expect them to sing Hochdeutsch not Plattdeutsch or Bairisch. And so on. I do not think I am unreasonable in my expectations as I have heard even foreign singers with cleaner Italian than Bergonzi's. Among his own generation practically every other Italian tenor famous enough to be hired in first and second tier opera houses used to sing standard Italian, not regional Italian. Regionalisms in opera are allowed only when the librettist asks for them specifically, as in the case of the "O Lola." Why are you so insistent on the diction issue? I have said many other things in my previous comment, more important things. I was talking about Bergonzi's constriction, Celletti's unknown (to me) argumentation, and most of all, what makes a Verdi singer in Verdi's opinion. You devoted so much time to the regional pronunciation issue (which in turn required me to devote twice as much time to set things straight), that I wonder whether you consider Bergonzi's regionally flavored but understandable Italian to be his most important qualification for the title of Verdi tenor. I sincerely hope this is not the case but I am afraid it is. In the list of accomplishments you have posted in your first reply, his diction is on second position right after the homogeneous voice he did not have.

[@Artiej0hn0]

Transposed 1/2 tone down.

[@tenorschofield]

BRAVISSIMO!!!;per sempre in nostri cuori il maestro Bergonzzi!!!

[@ingridenglitsch3840]

In nostri cuori, si!!! Aber der Direktion der Wiener Staatsoper war er keine schwarze Fahne wert. Die sollten sich schämen!!

[@ritaditrani6898]

Bergonizi: vocali strette e stridule.

[@giovannifassari6971]

Canta malissimo

[@eugeniogentili1048]

I piu grandi tenori Verdiani di sempre sono stati Mario del Monaco e Richard Tucker questo panzone è sempre stato un sopravvalutato.

[@LectronCircuits]

Awesome performance! Bummer that audio reproduction wavers to a sickening degree. Cheers!

[@HammondDER]

Where are all those grace notes? Why none of them were sung?

[@HammondDER]

@@maximus1295 речь о мелизмах, которые в партитуре Верди.

[@HammondDER]

@@maximus1295 там длинные форшлаги в нотах, которые он не спел. это называется мелизматика. фиоритура - более широкое понятие.

[@HammondDER]

@@maximus1295 скачайте партитуру, она есть в сети. чтобы вот так не говорить голословно.

[@rod1986100]

que le paso_-

[@robertodong-kyukim1056]

No comment

[@Acseivodracir]

Did he missed on purpose the high notes or is just my imagination?

[@deadtenorssociety2973]

Which high notes did he miss? Are you referring to the traditional interpolation of the high B natural (or, in this case, Bb)?

[@Acseivodracir]

@@deadtenorssociety2973 Sorry, you're right. I check it with my teacher, and he told me that il maestro Bergonzi tended to sing half-tone low. Greetings!

[@marcocavagnis1707]

a parte l'attacco sbagliato dell'aria

[@sensevicent]

fa niente

[@Eruption1910]

il pianista gli va dietro per tutta l'aria...mah...a me non piace molto

[@TheIldebrandoz]

@@Eruption1910 non a caso si chiama pianista accompagnatore.

[@HammondDER]

0:35 too wide and open.

[@antonioparecionavarro613]

Yo justo creo lo contrario; canta demasiado cerrado para que las notas sobre todo los agudos, no se le escapen

[@HammondDER]

@@antonioparecionavarro613 These are not acuti, these are top passaggio notes - G#'s. The lower passaggio notes are not covered.

[@37valerio]

Che disastro. Tutto stonato, si regge la panza con due mani ed è tutto intubato.

[@TheIldebrandoz]

Lei confonde con la scarsa qualità audio di questa registrazione, se non ci ha fatto caso anche il pianoforte ha l'audio sfalsato.

[@eugeniogentili1048]

Se questo è il tenore verdiano del secolo Richard Tucker e Mario del Monaco cosa sono stati?

[@antonioparecionavarro613]

Entubado si, desafinado no

[@rod1986100]

desastre

[@Eruption1910]

Non mi piace per nulla

[@Narcisse2000]

e neppure a me, fra l'altro calantissimo

[@Ilvermibaleno]

@@Narcisse2000 Ma si, è un bluff della lirica, un bug che non è stato controllato.

[@voltape]

Full theatre acclaiming him e a questi signori critici non piace!

[@TheIldebrandoz]

@@Narcisse2000 guardi che è l'audio della registrazione ad essere sfalsato, lo si puó notare anche dal suono del pianoforte.. ma a lei le orecchie funzionano?

[@TheIldebrandoz]

@@Ilvermibaleno ma non dire stronzate

[@user-lv1dm2fz1y]

残念ですね。録音がよくないです。ピアノの音ですぐ分かりますね。その中でのベルゴンツィの声はやはり一流ですね。評判通りだと思います。

[@Keatsy08]

With all my respect to his long and remarkable career, I should say a great tenor needs high notes and more lightness. Even when younger Bergonzi had deficit of these...

[@davidgould9431]

@Alexey Although I agree with you about "high notes and lightness", I find it hard to discover many tenors who actually have both. Bergonzi started as a baritone, which might explain the lack of both. Then again, so did Ramon Vinay and Placido Domingo, both of whom reverted to singing baritone at the ends of their careers. I'd probably put both of them in the "not light, not comfortable when high" bucket but also call them great tenors. I think (too lazy to google it) that Lauritz Melchior was also a baritone initially. For a heldentenor, he had a lot of brightness and definitely got the high notes nailed. Not so sure about lightness with him. My personal favourite tenor is Gigli (I'm 60 years old and inherited that love from my parents, who heard him sing in England in his twilight years) and I think he had both the beauty of voice and the ability to project emotional intensity. Apparently Bergonzi, when still a baritone, sang Marcello to Gigli's Rodolfo at the Met (and another pair of roles that I've forgotten: google is your friend, probably). Gigli wasn't a barnstorming Corelli or del Monaco but, although they had the ringing high notes and could both do a stunning diminuendo when needed, they didn't really have "lightness". Gigli had a sweetness of tone and could caress a Neapolitan song to melt the heart but could also project Andrea Chenier's poetic fervour right into you. Schipa had lightness (and a tremendous musicality) but no high notes. Caruso had beauty and weight; not sure about either high notes or lightness, but he did something that absolutely captivated: I was moved to tears the first time I heard his Core N'grato - he just sounded so sad, and that's something I have never recaptured, not by listening to him or to the sublime di Stefano, whom I would nominate for my absolute favourite Core N'grato singer (unless I could recapture that first Caruso moment). Lots of tenors we could talk about. Björling, for example: absolutely a great tenor, maybe not so "light" (better in Swedish, I think, where he seems more relaxed), decent high notes if not quite Gedda's top Ds. And others. At the end of the day, Bergonzi had a voice that was pleasant - if not mellifluous like Gigli's - and a great legato and could hit the emotional highs and lows with the best: he was a great tenor. And bear in mind that he was over 60 years old in 1987, so it's a bit harsh to knock marks off for lack of "high notes and lightness" on the basis of this video. All this is the personal opinion of a total non-expert (I know what I like but I have little idea why) and everyone reading this is most likely outraged: sorry. If you think I've mis-represented your personal favourite tenor here, then I'm very sorry. We are all different and have different preferences, and that's great.

[@sugarbist]

@@davidgould9431 Very nice comments

[@mikec5487]

Awful.

[@SamsungGalaxy-rv9xm]

Too overrated singer, sorry.

[@user-py1jg6bb2r]

comparing to who? And what is your singer?

[@user-py1jg6bb2r]

@@MaxPower-cp5qi Carlo is the finest. Overrated are those today's stars or 3 tenors that selling cds and only care of cash inflow... truly fantastically overrated.