Riccardo Stracciari: A Calendar of Song: A Self-Advertising Aria to Start the New Year
Seventh Day of Christmas: A Calendar of Song
And now we need something light. So, when I want to give you something that both comic and a big sing, my mind flies to Figaro’s “Largo al factotum” from Rossini’s Barbiere di Siviglia. This is the aria everyone knows without knowing it: it’s made Figaro’s name more famous than Mozart’s Figaro – so that when people speak of Mozart’s character, they expect him to sing “Figarofigarofigaro”, the way many people expect the Swan Queen in Swan Lake to dance the Dying Swan. (I really did somehow expect Monica Mason to dance the Dying Swan when I saw Swan Lake the first time at age nineteen, even though I knew one was Saint-Saëns and the other Tchaikovsky. Fortunately, I knew one Figaro from another at an earlier age, having grown up with recordings of both operas while in short trousers.)
This is Figaro’s entry aria, all energy and self-advertisement but with touches of both satire and exhaustion. It has sequences of top-speed patter; other sequences of comedy voices as he mimics people calling for his services; and some passages of real brilliance.
Would you like more than one recording for once? So many great baritones recorded this, especially in the first quarter of the last century.
But if I had to choose one, then my selection would be the one I grew up with, even though it’s by a baritone in his early fifties. Riccardo Stracciari (1875-1955). Stracciari, with a stunning voice from bottom to top, was said to have sung Rossini’s Figaro a thousand times in his career; he certainly recorded it at least five times. He was also celebrated as the tragically vengeful Rigoletto, and made marvelous recordings of many arias. Rosa Ponselle, no less, singled him out as the baritone whose voice she most adored: she likened his sound to “black diamonds”. Unlike many Figaros, his voice has darkness and thunder (tremendous in his Rigoletto, which he recorded complete with La Scala colleagues); but when you hear him in his 1929 complete Barbiere recording (the same la Scala team), you hear what a clown he could be, parodying the lovelorn Rosina and Almaviva, ad-libbing right, left, and centre, even at about age fifty-four.
Here’s his 1927 recording of “Largo al factotum”. With his 1929 recording (they’re quite alike), I find this the funniest version on record, not just for his various voices but for the amazing way he suggests a nervous breakdown in the vocal pressure in “Uno alla volta, per carità” (“One at a time, for heaven’s sake”). He takes liberties with the text - so did everyone in that era with this music. And what splendor in those top notes! Here you are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHe3MVKUrjk
Figaro:
Largo al factotum della città, largo!
Tralala-lalala-lalala-la !
Presto a bottego che l'alba è già, presto!
Tralala-lalala-lalala-la !
Ah, che bel vivere, che bel piacere
che bel piacere, per un barbiere di qualità, di qualità !
Make way for the city’s factotum!
Tralala-lalala-lalala-la!
Quick to the shop now that it’s dawn, quick!
Tralala-lalala-lalala-la!
Ah, what good living, what delight,
what delight for a barber of class!
Ah, bravo Figaro! Bravo, bravissimo! Bravo!
Tralala-lalala-lalala-la ! Fortunatissimo per verità, bravo!
Tralala-lalala-lalala-la ! Fortunatissimo per verità ! (x2) Tralalala, etc. !
Ah, fine Figaro! Marvellous, the best! Marvellous very good!
Tralala-lalala-lalala-la! Very lucky indeed, marvellous!
Tralala-lalala-lalala-la! Very lucky indeed! Tralala!
Pronto a far tutto, la notte e il giorno,
sempre d'intorno in giro sta.
Miglior cuccagna per un barbiere,
vita più nobile, no, non si da.
Tralalala, etc. !
Ready to do everything, night and day,
always going around in circles.
A better life for a barber,
a nobler life, no, there is not.
Tralalala, etc.!
Rasori e pettini, lancette e forbici,
Al mio comando, tutto qui sta.
Rasori e pettini, lancette e forbici,
Al mio comando, tutto qui sta.
Razors and combs, lancets and scissors,
at my command, everything’s here.
Razors and combs, hands and scissors,
at my command, everything’s heret.
V'è la risorsa, poi, de mestiere
Colla donnetta... col cavaliere...
Colla donnetta... tralalalera col cavaliere... tralalalalalalalala La-la-la !
So here are the tools, then, for the masters,
with the ladies ... tralala with the gentlemen ... tralalala!
Ah, che bel vivere, che bel piacere,
che bel piacere, per un barbiere di qualità, di qualità
Ah, what good living, what delight,
what delight, for a barber of class.
Tutti mi chiedono, tutti mi vogliono,
Donne, ragazzi, vecchi, fanciulle:
Qua la parrucca... Presto la barba...
Qua la sanguigna... Preste il biglietto...
Qua la parrucca, presto la barba,
Presto il biglietto... ehi!
Everyone’s asking for me, everyone needs me,
women, children, old men, girls:
The wig here! Quick, this beard!
Here a bleeding… Quick., the ticket…
Here the wig; quick the beard,
Quick, the ticket… Eh!
Figaro! Figaro! Figaro!, etc.
Ahimè, che furia! Ahimè, che folla!
Uno alla volta, per carità! per carità! per carità!
Uno alla volta, uno alla volta, uno alla volta, per carità!
Figaro, Figaro, Figaro
Oh no, what fury! Oh no, what madness!
One at a time, for heaven’s sake! for heaven’s sake! for heaven’s sake!
One at a time, one at a time, one a time, for heaven’s sake!
Figaro! — Son qua. — Ehi, Figaro! — Son qua.
Figaro qua, Figarolà (x2)
Figaro su, Figaro giù (x2)
Pronto prontissimo son come il fulmine:
Sono il factotum della città
Della città (x3)
Figaro! - I’m here. –Eh, Figaro! – I’m here.
Figaro here, Figaro there,
Figaro up, Figaro down.
Quick, quicker, like lightning,;
I’m the city’s factotum,
the whole city’s.
Ah, bravo Figaro! Bravo, bravissimo (x2).
Fortunatissimo, fortunatissimo, fortunatissimo per verità.
Tralalala, etc. !
A te fortuna, a te fortuna, a te fortuna non mancherà.
Sono il factotum della città (x2), della città (x3)
Marvelous Figaro, marvellous, the best,
Luckiest, luckiest, luckiest indeed.
Tralala!
To you good luck, to you good luck, to you good luck will not be lacking.
I’m the city’s factotum - the whole city’s!
You can find fault with Straccari: his vowels have a plum-in the mouth quality, like an intrusive “w” that keeps them from full Italian openness. (Claudia Muzio has it too – it may have been a period affectation.) But you can hear every word, often at top speed, and that voice is extraordinary. Still, if you want a brighter, lighter voice, here’s that great actor Tito Gobbi (1913-1984), in his thirties, also brilliant in patter and multiple voices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKODeYAigp0 in his 1950 recording. (When HMV brought out a Gobbi compilation LP in the 1970s, he vetoed any of his recordings of this aria until they played him this one, which pleased him as he had not anticipated.) By comparison, Gobbi has half Stracciari’s voice, and he can’t sing the music without a lot of aspirates (“Largo ahal factohotum”; “Che be-helpiacehehere”), which is unstylish and gets more obvious as she goes along. Still, his energy and his diction are superb; and his timbre has a stinging quality that gets into your nervous system. For me, he and Sesto Bruscantini are the last modern Figari of importance: it’s always a hit aria in performance, but the Figari of the last sixty years strike me as relatively po-faced, though many of them are barihunks with handsome voices.
Here’s another superb actor, Pasquale Amato (1878-1942), recording it in 1911: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEhlqdgqcs0 Some don’t like his vibrato; but his diction, patter, range of colours, intensity are all wonderful. He’s more stylish (and more musically imaginative) than Gobbi, and at this stage of his thirties he has a better top. (They both had problems from their forties onwards. Amato’s great recordings are all before age forty; Gobbi often went flat at the top of his voice, but was so great an actor and, in his way, vocalist, that he was superb up to age sixty. He was that age when I, aged eighteen, saw him sing Scarpia and Falstaff at Covent Garden in 1973-1974.)
I could give you others from Mattia Battistini and Titta Ruffo to Simon Keenlyside and Peter Mattei. But now let’s just go back to Riccardo Stracciari in his earliest “Largo al factotum” I can find on YouTube, from 1914: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snH-f3ovrSs He’s still in his twenties; he has terrific speed and glory combined: no aspirates and top notes that blaze with gleaming security. We don't have to choose; and differentiating one version from another helps to keep opening up the music, the character, and the style or styles.
Friday 1 January
