VERDI: “Don Carlo.” Angelo LoForese, Anita Cerquetti,...

VERDI: “Don Carlo.” Angelo LoForese, Anita Cerquetti, Fedora Barbieri. Cesare Siepi, Ettore Bastianini, Giulio Neri, others. Forces of Florence May Festival conducted by Antonino Votto. Melodrama CDM 370104. In this live recording made in 1956, the May Festival showed it could have an off day. Votto, often unjustly maligned as routinier, was in excellent command as he achieved nuances in an overall disciplined grand line. The edition used was the revised Italian one, minus the Fontainebleau scene. Two of the singers were exceptional, the youthful Bastianini and Siepi glorying in pure beauty of tone and dramatic imagination. LoForese, a last-minute substitute for Mario Filippeschi, had a clarion, if rough, sound that would make him welcome as a star in any international house today. Cerquetti’s lush soprano began strongly, but fell apart in the Act III quartet and never got back on track. Barbieri was, as always, thrilling theatrically but in this instance painfully flat at almost all climaxes. The aging Neri gave an object lesson in how to employ vocal tricks to avoid or minimize troublesome high notes. The audience appeared to love everything. Veiled sound.