La Traviata 1964 Margherita Rinaldi, Pavarotti, Taddei, Guarnieri, Dublin

I have uploaded two other performances of Traviata held here in Dublin, one from 1964 with the same cast except for Taddei replaced by Bardelli, and another from 1966, again with Rinaldi; there you can listen to Violetta's cabaletta from act I, without cuts: I leave you the links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhKklQL9tLY&t=13s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGn8VPhpcC4&t=3044s

VIOLETTA MARGHERITA RINALDI
ALFREDO GERMONT LUCIANO PAVAROTTI
GIORGIO GERMONT GIUSEPPE TADDEI
FLORA BERVOIX MARY SHERIDAN
ANNINA MONICA CONDRON
GASTONE BRENDAN CAVANAGH
BARONE DOUPHOL ALBERTO ORO
MARCHESE D'OBIGNY ERNESTO VEZZOSI
DOTTORE GRENVIL LORIS GAMBELLI

CONDUCTOR FERDINANDO GUARNIERI

D.G.O.S
RADIO EIREANN SIMPHONY ORCHESTRA
D.G.O.S. CHORUS
1964


It has now been established that two separate and distinct recordings have survived of this 1964 production of “La Traviata”; but for many years, only a single recorded version was known to exist – predictably enough a radio broadcast of what turned out to be the final performance of the series featuring Cesare Bardelli as Giorgio Germont. The story of how this came about – and how the second recording emerged – is worth recording in full.
Wind the clock back to Christmas 1963 when plans were bring settled for the upcoming Tenth Festival of Italian Opera which was scheduled to take place in Dublin during late spring of the following year: continuing the tradition for superstar billing which had been established that Spring by Giuseppe di Stefano in Tosca, rumours began to circulate that Verdi’s “Otello” was being planned to open the spring 1964 season with Mario del Monaco as the moor, Giuseppe Taddei as Iago and Virginia Zeani as Desdemona; plans for this were proceeding well until del Monaco was involved in a motoring accident in December which precluded his participation and the plans had to be revised.
Del Monaco’s replacement – Pier Miranda Ferraro – wasn’t available for the original dates so “Traviata” was promoted to the headline event and Taddei promoted to fill the full-page superstar billing slot in the season brochure. The only problem was that prior commitments meant that he could now only deliver the first three out of a scheduled four performances; but his appearances as Giorgio Germont were nevertheless hotly anticipated.
Naturally there were plans for a radio broadcast: customarily this would be the 3rd or 4th performance of the run with the earlier ones used by the Radio Eireann engineers to test acoustical balance, etc. Representations were made to the chief engineer (whose wife, as luck would have it, sang in the chorus) and his assistant (who had grown up singing in the chorus) to emphasise the vital importance of capturing the DGOS debut of such an important Italian baritone for posterity. Needless to say, when the recording was eventually broadcast, RE had chosen the fourth performance – with Cesare Bardelli as Germont pere – for apparent “technical reasons”; but none of that mattered: it wasn’t Taddei on the broadcast and the opportunity for a recording of the great baritone singing in Dublin had apparently been lost forever.
Wind forwards 52 years to the 2016 and another recording of the 1964 Dublin “Traviata” emerges online – this time with Giuseppe Taddei as Germont – it is being circulated amongst enthusiasts on the internet. Initially those “in-the-know” in Dublin were dismissive of such a claim. There was no question that the original radio broadcast hadn’t taken place with that cast; but there was also no doubt that this new tape sounded different – and remarkably like Taddei; so the only question that then remained was how this mysterious recording could have come about in the first place.
Margherita Rinaldi was the Violetta of those performances; dim recollections of her husband (the conductor Valentino Barcellesi, who accompanied her on this visit to Dublin) seemed to suggest that he had brought with him an early production model of the portable Philips Compact Cassette machine, such as became both popular and widespread during the 1970s and 1980s, but were still virtually unknown in 1964. The recording of Act 1 ends abruptly and inopportunely just before Rinaldi’s climactic high note – suggesting that after just over 31 minutes of recording a standard C60 had reached its end.
Thus, after half a century, we now have a second in-house recording made on 25th May 1964 at the second performance of the series featuring Giuseppe Taddei as Giorgio Germont and preserving his Dublin appearance for ever! Attempts were made (by Ugo Benelli, amongst others) to conclusively verify the provenance of this new recording, but all that could be established was that the Philips machine had been in Dublin and that some tapes had survived.
https://operainireland.wordpress.com/1964-la-traviata-verdi-2/

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