Eboli will certainly display the full contents of any dramatic mezzo-soprano’s larder. And I say “dramatic mezzo-soprano” because that’s the modern voice type that is most apt to meet the role’s climactic demands in the Garden Scene trio and the “O don fatal(e).” Those demands alone are considerable, involving as they do tone that is dominant without being harsh for the full B-to-B range, launched with prompt attack and rhythmic drive, and complemented by a perfectly bonded legato, preferably warm-sounding, in the lower-middle tessitura (i. e., the register-transition area) for the center section of the aria. Yet Eboli’s introductory piece is the Veil Song, which is essentially light and in need of ductility, precision, and delicacy. In my more or less random wanderings through parts of live performances of yesteryear by way of prep, I came across the Mexican mezzo Oralia Dominguez, singing the role on a RAI Torino broadcast of 1954 (four acts, in Italian, naturally). I was quite taken by her handling of this ballad, with its wry tale of old Moorish Spain, replete with musical gestures illustrative of both that and Eboli’s sensual, game-playing nature—and, not incidentally, a foreshadowing of the switched-veils deception that propels that key turn of plot in the Garden Scene, not to mention the veil of different import that Eboli finally chooses over exile. All these gestures—the sudden alternations of f or mf with ppp; the accents on weak beats; the swell-and-diminish through bars of chromatic melismas and little staccato pointings; and above all the cadenzas that end each verse, with their flashing ascents to the toying with upper F-sharps and As, first on accented forte eighths, then on pianissimo sixteenths, and ending with a tiny thirty-second flip up to the top A, by way of an insinuating finish; and finally the flamenco-like roulades (“come un mormorio, sempre dim.,” according to my Ricordi Italian vocal score) in the lower-middle, directly on the passaggio pitches)—all these depend for their effective execution in the grand opera context on a large voice in possession of the dramatic characteristics described above. Without that, they do not register. But with that, one seldom finds the technical acumen to fully realize them.

All told, the Veil Song seems to suggest a quite different voice and technical armory from the one that must be mobilized for the later scenes; yet all belong to the same role, and though Verdi wrote demandingly, he did not write unrealistically. A voice whose set-up was a little different from that of the typical 20th-Century dramatic mezzo, more akin to the older bright, open type of Italian contralto (not the darker, deeper Anglo/Northern European model), a sort that might have taken the Rossini contralto parts, must have been in his ear. Dominguez catches the character of this song fetchingly, and the superbly secure blend in the low midrange (also required in the first part of the Garden Scene, where Eboli’s snaky line is easily lost against the male voices) makes for a beautiful center section of “O don fatale.” Regrettably, her handsome tonal format (termed “exotic” in a couple of the reference sources, and it fits) does not extend to the stress of the aria’s conclusion, which thins out—the defect that kept her from meeting the likes of Stignani, Barbieri, and Simionato on equal terms. She manages it better on a DG recital disc released a few years later, but it’s still touch-and-go.