Renata Scotto 1934-2023 - an appreciation

RENATA SCOTTO: MORE THAN A SINGER

AN APPRECIATION

The twilight years of the LP era coincided with my operatic awakening in the late 1970s. This was a period when sumptuously cast studio recordings rained down upon us. Renata Scotto’s name seemed to be everywhere: she featured in an incredible twenty-one complete operas and recitals between 1974-80.

What snagged me when I heard her was less the pure voice than her way with a phrase—so much more vivid, more lived in, with a greater sense of immediacy than any of her contemporaries. The clarity of her diction, her range from silvery bel canto to radiant declamation, her ability to veer from the raptly spun pianissimo to squally outbursts transformed the reenactment of drama into life. By comparison, much of the competition sounded bland and too comfy.

As a fanboy I had once gone backstage at the Royal Opera House to get her autograph after a performance of Verdi’s Macbeth. I couldn’t believe this cosy and cheery diminutive being (she was 4’11) had just been raging across the stage as a demonically possessed and most vibrantly sung Lady Macbeth. Of all things, her stature and tiny nose had made history on the occasion of her La Scala debut—aged nineteen—in the trouser role of Walter in Catalani’s La Wally. A larger, false nose was deemed necessary, but as she received more curtain calls than the principals, Renata Tebaldi and Mario del Monaco, she later wrote in her 1984 autobiography, More Than a Diva, “I wore a plastic nose for the first night, and realized it was not the nose they were applauding.”

Renata Scotto died on 16 August in Savona, where she was born in 1934. Of humble beginnings, indeed—her mother was a seamstress and her father a policeman.. Aged twelve, she was taken by her uncle to see Rigoletto with Tito Gobbi (with whom she sang Gilda in the early 1960s), and vowed to become an opera singer. Success came swiftly; at eighteen, she was singled out at a Milanese forum for aspiring singers to take on Violetta at Milan’s Teatro Nuovo, (Opera: Oct 1953 pp.624-5). This led to La Scala and a busy schedule in Italy and beyond. She first sang Butterfly, which would become her signature role, at the age of just twenty.

In 1957 the Edinburgh Festival propelled her to international prominence when she sang La sonnambula, in the wake of Maria Callas, who had refused to do an extra performance scheduled without her consent. Callas gave Scotto her blessing; from then on, their names were linked, usually attended by controversy. When Scotto sang Elena in I vespri Siciliani at La Scala in 1970, 19 years after Callas, the almost retired diva was present, and the claque went berserk, disrupting Scotto’s performance with cries of “Brava Callas!” Scotto ill-advisedly vented her pique at a gossip columnist: “Let them get Callas to come and do this, if she can sing,” resulting in further claque harassment throughout the run. This even continued beyond Callas’s death, at the Met in 1979, disrupting her televised broadcast of Luisa Miller, and in 1981 at a problematic opening night of Norma. Not that Scotto was a stranger to controversy. She had famously slapped Giuseppe di Stefano during a performance of L’elisir d’amore for wandering off and eating an apple in the wings; and there was a famous feud with Luciano Pavarotti over his slovenly preparedness and unscheduled solo bows at San Francisco Opera during a live telecast of La Gioconda.

Scotto married Lorenzo Anselmi, concertmaster at La Scala, in 1960, who later gave up his career to become her manager and vocal coach. Her Covent Garden debut was in Madama Butterfly in 1962, but she was already well known to London audiences following a 1957 season at the Stoll Theatre which had showcased her as Mimi, Adina, Donna Elvira and Violetta. Her Metropolitan Opera debut, again with Butterfly came in 1965, garnering rave reviews. In OPERA (Jan 1966: pp 51) John Ardoin wrote: ‘Her performance was one of total involvement and complete commitment to the drama and music at hand. Through gesture, voice, and that round but marvellously expressive face, she illuminated moments in the libretto that have long gone unnoticed…….Her voice was full in the middle register and silvery on top.’

Reviews from this early period confirm that she was already an interpreter of uncommon insight. She continued at the Met in her regular roles: Lucia di Lammermoor, L’elisir d’amore, Rigoletto, La traviata, La sonnambula and La bohême - but she grew dissatisfied with Rudolf Bing’s refusal to offer her new productions and roles that would showcase her darkening voice. She very publicly expressed her displeasure in a New York Times article entitled “If the Met won’t sing her tunes, goodbye Scotto.” While honouring existing commitments, she signed no new contracts.

When Bing left and James Levine took over as principal conductor in 1972, Scotto was lured back to the Met going on to spend fifteen years as its reigning diva. In 1977 she appeared in her first Met telecast as Mimi, but, as she states in her memoir, “I hated the way I looked. In short, I was fat.” She went on a diet, eschewing her favorite pasta dishes, prompting further comparisons with Callas by becoming svelte, and glamorous. In tandem with her change of appearance, her voice darkened, gaining in intensity and range of colour, and her Met roles showed a progress from lyric to dramatic soprano: Elena in I vespri Siciliani, Berthe in Le Prophète, all three heroines in Trittico (a tour de force), Il trovatore, Adriana Lecouvreur, Luisa Miller, Don Carlo, La Gioconda, Manon Lescaut, Norma, Macbeth, La clemenza di Tito and Francesca da Rimini. Some critics felt these roles too heavy for her, and the toll on her voice was undeniable; but the interpretative returns revealed a unique artistry well worth the price.

Fortunately, Scotto is one of the most documented performers of the late 20th century. She made two studio recordings each of her ‘essential’ roles, Madama Butterfly, La traviata, Rigoletto and La bohème, and featured in Met videos of La bohème (as both Mimì and Musetta), Luisa Miller, Don Carlo, Otello, Il trittico and Francesca da Rimini. YouTube is a treasure trove of filmed and pirated performances from all periods of her life, offering audio and video content from her La Scala La Wally in 1953 to a touching chat with Antonio Pappano, from 2020 about the death of Mimì. A comparison of her 1973 Tokyo Lucia to her 1978 Met Desdemona reveals a sea change in vocal colour and dramatic involvement. Scotto was no slouch in her earlier period as reviews attest, but her Lucia is somewhat generalized. Her Desdemona, post diet, is deeply considered in every detail: the voice is notably darker and more intense, every gesture and expression full of insight. The Willow Song and Ave Maria are particularly riveting. Not here the usual lyric intermezzo between calamities, but a portrait of a woman in shock, attempting to make sense of incomprehensible events. A comparison of her two studio recordings of La traviata is instructive; the first (released in 1963) is highly recommendable, though somewhat stridently sung, while her 1980 recording with Riccardo Muti is a thing of interpretative and nuanced wonder, with many phrases marked indelibly by her emotional intelligence.

Scotto’s farewell to the Met in came in 1987 with Madama Butterfly, appearing as both director and star. She never repeated this experiment on herself, but took to directing others, often in operas associated with her. Her later performances show a constant quest for new challenges: Fedora, Werther, The Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, La Voix humaine, Kundry, Erwartung, Klytemnestra in Elektra—and Menotti’s The Medium. She became a valued mentor to younger singers, notably teaching at Juilliard and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, also coaching Reneé Fleming, Anna Netrebko and Deborah Voigt, and mentoring Jessica Pratt and Rosa Feola.

Her genius is well worth transmitting. When I think back to that Covent Garden Macbeth, I vividly recall the balance between gesture (one could write a thesis on her expressive hands), vocal nuance and dramatic and verbal specificity. Her approach at the end of the sleepwalking scene, with its notorious fil di voce top D flat—so often bellowed into the wings or just avoided altogether—was spellbinding. Her face, totally vacant, drained, other-worldly, seemed to challenge the audience, as she emitted a perfect, uncanny, hushed yet resonant note that somehow flooded the auditorium; her elegant turn, with a gliding gait that suggested she had already left this world, was an experience that still fills me with awe.