Verdi’s aida

Pappano’s last point is apparently reminiscent of some of the rhetoric that accompanied many earlier opera recordings, of the idea of creating an all-encompassing sense of aural theatre; but this set’s producer, Stephen Johns, is not interested in the technological bells and whistles beloved of the John Culshaws of this world. When Johns talks to journalists in the anteroom to the hall’s state-ofthe-art control studio, in the bowels of the building and accessed through a maze of concrete corridors and goods lifts, he explains his own essentially non-interventionist approach. ‘Electronic fakery sounds like electronic fakery,’ he says. ‘There are lots of recordings where they’ve done that. But what you want is a naturalness to the tone quality – the feeling of everybody being in the same space.’

katerina Semenchuk is the only soloist who has performed her role in the theatre

‘Italian music is in the orchestra’s DNA…

they naturally somehow know what this music requires’ – Antonio Pappano in which Pappano mixes further commentary with singing through parts of the roles himself.

The Santa Cecilia orchestra, though a symphonic one, has done opera under its previous music directors – Giuseppe Sinopoli, Daniele Gatti and Myung-Whun Chung among them. But Pappano’s aim is to concentrate with the players on Italian opera specifically. ‘It’s important that they have contact with Italian music, because it’s in their DNA, even if they haven’t played this. They naturally somehow know what it requires. That’s why I tell them the story, I read them the words, even if they laugh at me when I do it. I do it anyway, so that they get something. All they need is a couple of clues, and they’re off.’

Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, taped in concert, was another of the fruits on record of Pappano’s operatic work with

As Johns talks to us, Kaufmann comes in looking for his bag, and also takes advantage of the opportunity to hear some of his takes from the afternoon’s closed session, in which he tackled Radames’s ‘Celeste Aida’. Encouraging snippets of ringing top notes are heard through the door as the producer continues: ‘These big studio recordings happen so infrequently and it’s sad in some ways, since we have a great way of doing it now. You think about how operas were recorded in the 1960s and ’70s, with people moving around on large grids, but we’ve developed quite a bit from that.’ When it comes to special effects, to recreating the sense of off-stage voices and musicians, simplicity is of the essence. ‘We will have that sense of theatre. We did move things – we had the Egyptian trumpets in the Grand March one space back and then brought them forward. And for the banda – there’s 40 of them – moving them forward 10 paces was easier than turning the microphones up.’ He goes on to explain the challenges for the end of Act 4, Aida and Radames’s ‘O terra addio!’, due to be recorded the following afternoon. ‘You have to work out exactly what you want to create. This is the two lovers entombed – what does the tomb sound like? And you’ve also got a distant choir outside the tomb, and you’ve got Amneris singing too. To get those perspectives right just takes a little bit of thought. But it’s always better to try and do it in the room first of all – and electronics second.’

He describes his job as that of a wicketkeeper: ‘I have to catch all the ones that fly past. Tony’s got phenomenal ears, though, so he’s hearing things that are going wrong.’ Pappano’s own role, however, is perhaps more demanding than it might otherwise be. Only one of the principals, Semenchuk, has sung her role in the theatre, and there are no rehearsals with the orchestra ahead of the sessions. In the sessions I witness, however, Pappano is in his element. Each one includes a mini-masterclass, in which he talks the singers and orchestra through the scene and its key dramatic points, followed by a run-through with the orchestra his Rome orchestra, released by EMI in 2011. And originally the plan was to record Aida in concert too: ‘This was supposed to be three live performances, and I said no. Because this piece is so hermetically sealed: the silences are everything. And I could never get a silent audience here in Italy – whad’ya crazy?! It would never happen!’

Aida is also deeper in the orchestra’s DNA than it might initially seem, and the programme for the thrilling one-off concert performance that followed the sessions underlined an important historical link. In 1952, Decca produced what was arguably the first full-scale studio recording of Aida for LP, one of several recordings made at the end of each season since 1948 when the Sala Accademica – in the historical Accademia di Santa Cecilia building in central Rome – was turned into a recording studio; at that time, all major labels sought out an ‘operatic home’ in Italy, with EMI striking a deal with La Scala, RCA with the Teatro dell’Opera and Decca with Santa Cecilia.

That Aida was recorded with an all-Italian cast headed by Renata Tebaldi and Mario del Monaco and became for many years a staple of the company’s catalogue. The fact that Pappano’s all-star cast includes, in Marco Spotti’s King, just one Italian among its principals might give some cause to lament the state of opera in Italy. The fact that the recording has taken place at all, however, offers cause for guarded optimism that this orchestra’s new Aida (released on October 2) doesn’t close the chapter that its first one helped open more than six decades ago.

Pappano is taking one project at a time but remains positive. ‘Life is made to be, hopefully, full of surprises. Let’s see what happens. If this does really well, if this is a really good project, they’ll say, “Aha, it can be done! We need this much dosh. How do we do it? How do we plan for it?” It is possible, but we have to prove that the trouble, with all of these stars aligning, is worth the effort. Let’s see. I think it can be.’

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: M u s a c c h p h o t o g r a p h y

6 The best music of 2015

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