Gigli/Fleta: Who wouldn’t have wanted Beniamino Gigli, possessor of the most sumptuous, supple Italian tenor voice of the interwar years, as the male lead in his new opera? But, though he was singing such parts as Enzo Grimaldo and Andrea Chénier, Gigli evidently felt Calaf a stretch for him, and declined. Logical candidates like Giacomo Lauri-Volpi and Giovanni Martinelli were for various reasons set aside. It is a little puzzling that neither Aureliano Pertile nor Francesco Merli—the former a great favorite of Toscanini’s and the latter soon to become Italy’s reigning Otello and the Calaf of that first recording opposite Cigna—figured in the discussion.^(I) But apparently they did not, so the Spanish tenor Fleta, then in his prime and extremely popular, was Toscanini’s final choice. We rightly think of him, even more than the Gigli of the mid-1920s, as a predominantly lyrical singer. Certainly his clear, lean voice, with its open midrange and high-sounding position, had little of Gigli’s warmth and body. But the role of his debut (1919) was that of Paolo in Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini, and in1922 he originated the male title part in the same composer’s Giulietta e Romeo—assignments that at once suggest that his voice was stronger than we might assume, and that these roles, later usually taken by dramatic tenors of a stentorian sort, were not necessarily heard that way by their composer. Fleta did offer the assets of a freely ringing top and control over a ravishing diminuendo throughout the middle and upper ranges.

And for both of Turandot’s leading parts, that access to free top notes that can cleave the air of a large opera house, and to sufficient control to weave well-shaped phrases from them in a persistently high tessitura, are the key qualifications for the assignments, more important than sheer mass of voice. The reliance on these tools is quite extreme, as it is in some of Strauss’s soprano/tenor writing. Indeed, there are passages wherein Puccini’s vocal setting, set against harmonic and instrumental colorations he’d begun exploring in Fanciulla, are more than a bit reminiscent of Ariadne or Frau ohne Schatten or Aegyptische Helena. It’s as though each composer had taken the voice types developed by his great immediate predecessor (for Strauss, Wagner; for Puccini, Verdi), pushed them a half-to-full-step higher, and left them there over stretches of undulating horizontal line. Lower down, while of course solidity and aesthetically acceptable timbre are desirable, clarity and audibility are sufficient for effectiveness in the writing.

Turandot was immediately taken up by almost every opera house in Europe, U. K., and the Americas that was in possession of the requisite forces. Scacciati sang the title part in many venues and Jeritza, as already noted, “created” it for the Met. The Hungarian-born, American-raised soprano Anne Roselle gave the German premiere (in Dresden, under Fritz Busch), and Lehmann herself the Vienna one—though she didn’t retain it long in her repertoire, and Maria Nemeth, with a voice that, as recorded, has a girlishly eager quality, a big top, and a rather weak lower range, took charge of it there up until the Second World War. Neither Roselle’s nor Lehmann’s may strike us as a natural voice for the role. But they both recorded, in German, Turandot’s two excerptable solos, the “In questa reggia” and—when admitted into the performing edition—”Del primo pianto.” Roselle’s version of “In questa reggia” rather saunters along languorously, with lots of portamento (an unaccustomed treatment, but not uninteresting), until the range begins to climb, then rather unexpectedly opens out into a full, shining top of ease and purity. Her approach to phrasing conforms perfectly to “Del primo pianto,” and again the top glows, especially on the three A-naturals of “E t’ho odiato per quella . . E per quella t’ho amato,” followed by a neatly measured ascent to an interpolated high C. Lehmann, as we would anticipate, has more of interest to offer in the lower octave, in liveliness of musical expression, and in the treatment of text. And though she later had her difficulties with anything beyond B-flat, and her recording of “In questa reggia” stops short of the phrase that carries her up to the C, she inserts one (a  good one, too) at the same spot in “Del primo pianto” as does Roselle.