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Giuseppe Verdi

Welitsch ‘Ballo’, Edinburgh Festival 1949

1949. Kings Theatre, Edinburgh
'Un ballo in maschera' performed at the 1949 Edinburgh Festival, conducted by Vittorio Gui and starring Ljuba Welitsch, Mirto Picchi and Paolo Siveri.
Composer Giuseppe Verdi
Conductor Vittorio Gui
Singers Mirto Picchi, Paolo Silveri, Ljuba Welitsch
Ensembles Glyndebourne Festival Chorus, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Genre Opera

Edinburgh Festival’s Ballo in Maschera 1949

Before the celebrations in 1951 which marked the 50th anniversary of Verdi’s death, the majority of his 28 operas were neglected during the first half of the century.  The central trio of Rigoletto, Trovatore and Traviata, plus the later Aida and less often Otello and Falstaff, were the staples, but much earlier Verdi was regarded with disdain.  Germany began the revival of the middle-period masterworks in the late 1920s, inspired by Franz Werfel’s 1924 novel Verdi – Roman der Oper.  Werfel, who had married Mahler’s widow Alma, worked on German translations of seven Verdi operas, beginning with Die Macht des Schicksals (Forza del destino) in 1926 for Dresden conducted by its Musical Director Fritz Busch, who also led pioneering performances of the then unknown Simon Boccanegra and a famous production by Carl Ebert of Ein Maskenball in Berlin in 1932.  After Busch and Ebert were lured by John Christie to Glyndebourne in 1934, it followed that they created the first ever production by a British company of Verdi’s Macbeth in 1938.  It was that production which Glyndebourne brought for nine performances to the inaugural Edinburgh International Festival in 1947, with Margerita Grandi and Francesco Valentino as the Macbeths and conducted by the composer Berthold Goldschmidt (replacing the announced Georg Szell).

The original 300-seat opera house at Glyndebourne was small for Verdi, so Edinburgh’s King’s Theatre offered a welcome opportunity to expand the repertory.  While 1948 was restricted to two Mozart productions, including a Così fan tutte which introduced the eminent Italian Vittorio Gui to the company of which he was later to become Musical Director after Busch’s untimely death in 1951, the next summer of 1949 brought 11 performances of a new production of Un ballo in maschera by Carl Ebert with designs by Casper Neher.  Its success was a determining factor in the recently formed Covent Garden Opera’s choice to add the opera to its repertory in 1952, though it was several years before they were able to match Edinburgh’s line up of Ljuba Welitsch, Mirto Picchi, Paolo Silveri, Alda Noni and Jean Watson.  [See my accompanying note to Music Preserved’s issue of the 1962 revival of this opera.]

 

Gui conducted eight of the performances, but two in the middle and the final performance were taken over by his assistant Hans Oppenheim.  Likewise, Welitsch yielded Amelia to Margherita Grandi for three performances, and William Horne replaced Picchi  for two of them.  

Roger Beardsley, who undertook the complex task of remastering these historical recordings in 2010, explains the process:

It seems that all versions had their origins in a tape made by the well known collector Richard Bebb in the 1960s. A copy of that tape made by Bebb for Lord Harewood exists in the Harewood Collection at Music Preserved. In a fairly dangerous state, it was transferred and various technical anomalies ironed out. It was always known that it was a composite made up of mainly parts of the August performance conducted by Gui, with parts of the 10 September performance conducted by his assistant, Hans Oppenheim.  A version of this 1949 recording has been circulating for some years.  Whilst re-mastering, it was quite obvious that its source was 33 ⅓ rpm direct-cut discs. 

By one of those most fortunate coincidences, Music Preserved was given (by the Wade family) the collection of off-air recordings made in the 1940s and 1950s by the late Philip Wade who was a friend of Lord Harewood. All of these were direct-cut discs that Philip Wade recorded himself on two machines to give continuous recording. At this point I should mention that unless you have had experience of disc-cutting, you will have no idea how difficult and fraught the process is!

Whilst cataloguing these recordings, a set of discs labelled ‘Un Ballo in Maschera’ Edinburgh Festival 1949 was found. After cleaning and playing it was evident that these were the discs copied by Richard Bebb. So here was an opportunity to use modern digital techniques to get better results than would have been possible in the 1960s. 

Examining the discs also gave a good idea as to why some of the Oppenheim performance was used. He must have recorded the entire August broadcast, but from the label notes, several of the sides were not successful and are marked as ‘dud’. He then recorded the same passages during the September broadcast and so had the complete opera. 

However, the ‘dud’ sides were in the main playable using today’s equipment, and in particular the final side turned out to be very well recorded. So, this latest re-mastering contains as much of the August performance as possible, meaning that instead of 60 per cent Gui, we now have around 90 per cent. The opening bars of the prelude are also restored.

There is still some radio interference, and time has not always dealt kindly with the fragile discs, most noticeable with an occasionally increased background hiss. Indeed one of the Oppenheim sides is now unplayable, but luckily the equivalent ‘dud’ Gui side was in good order. There are a couple of odd moments at side changes where a part of a note has not been fully recorded, but the temptation to ‘fix’ these by substitution has been resisted!   

Roger Beardsley September 2010 

As a poignant postscript, Fritz Busch finally conducted Verdi post-war at the 1951 Edinburgh Festival, when he led nine performances of Ebert’s new production of La forza del destino.  Five days after the last performance, he died suddenly of a heart attack in London, aged 61.

Nicholas Payne
October 2024

Giuseppe Verdi (1813 – 1901)

Un ballo in maschera

Track 1: Part 1 (Act 1)

Track 2: Part 2 (Acts 2 and 3)

This recording was taken from a relay from the Kings Theatre Edinburgh on 29 August 1949.

The recording is from the Harewood and Philip Wade Collections at Music Preserved.

  • Mirto Picchi
    Riccardo
  • Paolo Siveri
    Renato
  • Ljuba Welitsch
    Amelia
  • Jean Watson
    Ulrica
  • Alda Noni
    Oscar
  • Ian Wallace
    Samuele
  • Harvey Allen
    Tomasso
  • Glyndebourne Festival Chorus
  • Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
  • Vittorio Gui
    Conductor

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