Tell is arrested for not saluting Gessler’s hat (mosaic at the Swiss National Museum, Hans Sandreuter, 1901)

For most people, Switzerland is a beautiful, but boring country. Everything is perfectly regulated there and even the cows’ udders produce real chocolate- milk right away. Right? Anything and everything will always thrive there and nothing ever really happens.

But even the Swiss have experienced something of an uprising, and they too have their national hero, although it is not entirely certain that he ever existed (take it from me: he did not).

William Tell, the Swiss national pride and freedom fighter, owes his fame mainly to the play by Friedrich Schiller, who, as we might expect from a Romantic poet, did not take the truth very seriously.

William Tell became even more famous because of an opera by Rossini. Although…. The opera wasn’t really well known until recently but: who doesn’t know the overture? Even my cat can meow it.

CDs

Antonio Pappano’s 2011 recording with the Orchestra e Coro dell’ Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Roma is far from complete. A shame and a missed opportunity, especially since the performance is really good.

Gerald Finley is a very good Tell (is there anything he can’t sing?), yet something is lacking. For me, at least. I can’t describe it, it’s more like an instinctive response, but I do get that ˜something” when I listen to Gabriel Baquier, on the old 1973 EMI recording.

The cast of that recording, led by the very spirited Lamberto Gardelli, has even more ˜plusses”. The biggest is Montserrat Caballé’s Mathilde. I suppose I don’t need to tell you how beautiful and flowing her notes are, how she ˜waves” through them, as it were, and how whispery her pianissimo is. No, Malin Byström (Pappano,) although good enough, really can’t compete with that! Her colouratures may be pure, but that’s all there is to it.

Another big plus is Mady Mesplé’s Jemmy, the real ˜veteran” in the ˜birdsong profession”. So incredibly beautiful! And Nicolai Gedda of course, a singer once called ˜a chameleon among singers” by one of my colleagues (do you know any other tenor who managed to sing so many different roles with so much talent?). And to all that you can add the playing time of almost 238 minutes versus Pappano’s ramshackle 208 minutes.

But if you think I am rejecting Pappano, you are wrong! Orchestrally, he is definitely superior to Gardelli. His choir sounds more beautiful and subtle, and on top of that comes the sound quality. The greatest asset of the Pappano recording, however, is John Osborn, a tenor who throws out the very highest notes as if they were child’s play. It was he who helped make the Saturday Matinee performance unforgettable. The (concertante) recording was done live, which heightens the atmosphere, especially with all those ˜bravos”.

Saturday Matinee 2009

John Osborn © Zemsky/Green Artists Management

What never came out on CD (shame!) is the absolutely complete performance in the unsurpassed NTR ZaterdagMatinee. Without cuts. A long sitting of almost five hours, but such  unforgettable hours! The audience was delirious and just about broke down the Concertgebouw.

The power of the performance lay in the fact that every role was brilliantly cast, right down to the smallest. Paolo Olmi conducted a great cast of really fantastic singers: Michele Pertusi, Marina Poplavskaya, Ilse Eerens and John Osborn. The Groot Omroepkoor performed its leading role in the opera with verve. So, there is no CD (cursing softly for a moment), but many fond memories.