Casta Diva (0:00)
Qual cor tradisti (2:59)
Deh! non volerli vittime (5:42),
Norma Scena Finale per La Burzio sola...
Recorded for Columbia at the time when she was appearing as Norma at La Scala (1912), and on Disco Paradiso 3 (from Pathé), in 1913.
What a near-manic intensity! amazing chest register and beautifully open top! She triumphs over the primitive recording... But it is also the sense of untrammeled interpretative freedom that makes Burzio's records such a particularly engrossing experience.
La patronessa del Verismo was a belcantista... who never made an uninteresting recording and also bequeathed us these unforgettable ones. She was an actress of gripping intensity. Her attention to the significance of the text is exceptionally insightful. It seems as though she is always singing in italics. Listen, for example, how she varies that freighted and thrice-repeated "abbi di lor pietade" (6:52) in "Deh! non volerli vittime". As she asks her father "Tu [puntatura di tradizione:] mel prometti!?", we hear a soul's despair (9:19).
La signorina Burzio suffered from nervousness and became addicted to drugs to help her sleep. To put this artist in better perspective, it is important to recognize that she was capable of grandeur. The majesty with which she utters "contenta al rogo io ascen _ de _ _ rò" (9:57) at the finale of Norma and, indeed, the aura of sublime vulnerability she lends this whole "monologue" put other renditions of this Scena Finale in the shade.
Her emphatic use of the open chest voice - ugly to some ears, exciting to others - harkens back to the late nineteenth century, when large-voiced Italian sopranos emphasized the voce di petto register for dramatic and emotional effect, and were expected to do so. Celestina Boninsegna, who belonged to this tradition, referred to her chest voice straightforwardly: "Era la mia gloria" she declared. We find a similar emphasis on this vocal resource in Burzio's recording of Norma's Scena Finale.
What to some listeners sounds like an unevenly equalized scale is for a singer of Burzio's effusive temperament just one of many colors in a rich palette. For instance, the voluptuous tints she lavishes on her coloratura of Casta Diva make it sound more like an amorous summons to a tryst rather than a religious practice: Ah! bello a me ritorna... Burzio's performance is a marvel of variegated details.
Her dramatic instincts are particularly apparent in "Qual cor tradisti". Her first words are grimly fatalistic, but when she sings "Tu sei con me!" (4:22), the voice begins to glow suggestively...
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"Eugenia Burzio (20 June 1872, Poirino, Piedmont* - 18 May 1922, Milan) was an Italian operatic soprano known for her vibrant voice and passionate style of singing ( ... ) She went on to enjoy a highly successful career throughout her homeland as a lyric-dramatic soprano, although her ardent, larger-than-life mode of vocalism was not calculated to appeal to the taste of more conservative British and American audiences, and this limited the scope of her international reputation ( ... ) Burzio was a magnetic actress and she became particularly associated with the music of the verismo school of composers, exemplified by Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Umberto Giordano and, to a certain extent, Puccini. She was a regular performer at Italy's pre-eminent opera house, La Scala, Milan, during the first two decades of the 20th century, appearing in a wide repertoire, often under the baton of Toscanini." **
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenia_...
Eugenia Burzio was born in Poirino near Turin in what may well have been 1879, but a date as early as 1872 has also been suggested...
** In 1907 Burzio returned to La Scala, where Toscanini, a returnee himself that season, ushered her into her major repertory. After her early encounters with veristic roles, she moved into more traditional, classic parts, but lavishing upon them the same intensity and immediacy of response that won her her first laurels. Burzio sang Gioconda in what was the first performance of Ponchielli's opera at La Scala in eighteen years for want of an adequate soprano. Toscanini directed her there in Aida, La Wally, and Cavalleria Rusticana. In December 1907 she sang an enthusiastically received Tosca, also led by Toscanini, and the following February 1908 she enjoyed another successful run of Giocondas. That fall the conductor went to the Met in New York, and Burzio, after visits to Buenos Aires for Gli Ugonotti, returned to La Scala, now with Tullio Serafin at the helm, in Pacini's Saffo (January 1911). She opened the following season as Gluck's Armida, and three months later she introduced this triumphant Norma.
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