Lamberto Gardelli

• http://www.klassika.info/Komponisten/Gardelli/lebenslauf_1.html by Elma Gardelli
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamberto_Gardelli
• https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamberto_Gardelli
• https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamberto_Gardelli
• https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamberto_Gardelli
• http://www.hovkapellet.com/musiker-och-dirigenter/1055/lamberto-gar...

From The Times of London: <<http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/98/08/17/timobiobi03004.h...>

Lamberto Gardelli, Italian conductor and composer, died in Munich on July 17 aged 82. He was born in Venice on November 18, 1915.

Lamberto Gardelli was the conductor who introduced the record-buying public to the early operas of Verdi in the 1970s. Some of them, such as Alzira and Il corsaro, were before then no more than names in musical textbooks. Most of the others selected by Gardelli were very rarely performed. Backed by his recording company, Philips, he trod forgotten ground, generally in the company of hand-picked casts.

The series was sparked by the success of I Lombardi with Placido Domingo in the lead, but Gardelli soon switched to José Carreras, whom he privately regarded at the time as being the best of the Three Tenors, as they became known - or at least the one most ready to carry out his musical wishes. Carreras's partner was more likely than not to be Katia Ricciarelli, then at the peak of her career.

The Gardelli repertory company, which also worked on the Orfeo label, opened the ears of the world. Early Verdi suddenly became fashionable. The conductor himself was an out-and-out Verdian, and those often raw works suited his brisk, no-nonsense tempi admirably. He had an impressive library of 19th-century operatic scores and would dash from one to the other to show how themes recurred in Verdi's music. Possibly the best of those recordings are I due Foscari, with the Carreras-Ricciarelli partnership, and Il corsaro, where the Spanish tenor is joined by Jessye Norman and Montserrat Caballé. The only Verdi he professed not to like was Luisa Miller.

Gardelli's own passion for Verdi dated back to when he was five, when he was taken by his parents to a performance of Il trovatore in Pesaro. He recalled coming home and picking out some of its themes on the family piano. His parents, whose interest in music was strictly amateur, thought then that it might be worth investing in a musical education. They chose well.

The young Lamberto studied piano and composition first in Pesaro and then at Santa Cecilia, Rome. In the latter city he was made a répétiteur at the Opera under Tullio Serafin, a conductor who was to influence many within the operatic world. Gardelli's own theatre debut came in Rome in 1944, when he conducted Traviata.

He had considered careers as a composer and a concert pianist, and by the time Traviata came along he had written two operas of his own, Alba novella (1937) and Il sogno (1942). But he decided on conducting, and his career, which spanned more than 50 years, was to be spent almost entirely outside Italy.

The first stop was Sweden, where he joined the Stockholm Opera in 1946, staying for almost ten years and taking charge of performances at nearby Drottningholm too. The next step was to Copenhagen and the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, where he worked from 1955 to 1961 before moving to be music director of the Budapest Opera.

In the Hungarian capital he became an immediate hero and remained one until the last years of his life. He first appeared there in the late 1950s and he immediately clicked with the orchestra, galvanising them into playing in a way some of his colleagues failed to do. On Gardelli nights the playbills were printed in red rather than black, indicating that a star was present and that seat prices would be correspondingly higher. His final opera performances, which included Aida and Manon Lescaut, were given there when he was in his eighties.

Budapest, too, saw the premieres of the compositions of Gardelli's old age. His Requiem was first heard there in 1990. He scored it specifically for baritone and mezzo, plus orchestra and chorus, commenting acidly that this would save him the problem of dealing with tenors and divas. Hungarian television transmitted his final opera, a one-act comedy called L'impresario dell'America.

His British debut was made, almost inevitably, at Glyndebourne, ever ready to take a risk on new names. This was in 1964 with Macbeth, for which Vittorio Gui had originally been booked. Gardelli was brought in as a replacement, not altogether happily. Verdi's opera seemed to carry the same curse as Shakespeare's play, at least as far as Glyndebourne was concerned. Two leading sopranos cried off late in the day and the third who eventually appeared was no great shakes.

It was not a happy time, but Gardelli made a good enough impression for him to be invited back for the same opera the next season, with a marginally better cast. His final appearance was in Donizetti's Anna Bolena, which he took over from his old Italian rival Gianandrea Gavazzeni. It was also in 1964 that he made his American debut with a concert performance at the Carnegie Hall of Bellini's Romeo and Juliet opera, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, which was scarcely known in those days.

Gardelli's first Covent Garden appearance was with Otello in 1968 and this began a lengthy run of performances at the house, always in the Italian repertory, which continued until Bohème in 1982. This last, distinguished mainly by the Mimi of Ileana Cotrubas, is happily preserved on video. There were some performances perhaps best forgotten, such the Lombardi given in the mid-1970s, which had a poor production. But with Gardelli in charge, Italian opera was generally in very safe hands - hands that were huge, especially in relation to his wiry and dapper body, completely devoid of excess flesh. His curtain calls were highly theatrical, with one hand placed on the heart and the other gesturing towards the score as if to say that it was all the composer's doing.

During the 1970s he was probably at his peak, travelling the world and appearing at its leading opera houses. Fortunately he leaves behind a substantial legacy of recordings, including around thirty complete operas, all of them by Italian composers. Even so, he never conducted at La Scala. Hungary embraced him, and he died in Germany, but his feelings towards his native country were ambivalent.

Lamberto Gardelli was married a number of times. He is survived by his last wife, Elma, a German actress, and their son.

Discografia parziale

• Giordano, Fedora - Gardelli/Del Monaco/Olivero, 1969 Decca
• Leoncavallo: Il Pagliacci - Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana - Lamberto Gardelli/Münchner Rundfunkorchester/Bernd Weikl/Vladimir Andreevič Atlantov/Lucia Popp/Franco Bonisolli/Martina Arroyo, 1984 RCA/BMG
• Puccini, Trittico - Gardelli/Del Monaco/Tebaldi, 1962 Decca
• Verdi, Attila - Gardelli/Raimondi/Deutekom, 1972 Decca
• Verdi, Corsaro - Gardelli/Carreras/Norman, 1975 Decca
• Verdi, Due Foscari - Gardelli/Carreras/Ricciarelli, 1976 Decca
• Verdi, Lombardi alla prima crociata - Gardelli/Domingo/Raimondi, 1971 Decca
• Verdi, Masnadieri - Gardelli/Raimondi/Caballé, 1974 Philips
• Verdi, Nabucco - Gardelli/Gobbi/Suliotis/Cava, 1965 Decca
• Verdi: Un Giorno di Regno - Fiorenza Cossotto/Jessye Norman/José Carreras/Lamberto Gardelli/Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/The Ambrosian Singers, 1974 Philips
• Verdi: La Battaglia di Legnano - José Carreras/Katia Ricciarelli/Lamberto Gardelli/Orf Symphony Chorus & Orchestra, 1978 Philips
• Verdi: Stiffelio - José Carreras/ Lamberto Gardelli/Matteo Manuguerra/Orf Symphony Chorus & Orchestra/Sylvia Sass, 1980 Philips
• Sass - Opera's Sensational New Star - Lamberto Gardelli/London Symphony Orchestra/Sylvia Sass, 1977 Decca
• Verdi: Macbeth (Version 1865 for the Paris Opéra) - Luciano Pavarotti/Elena Souliotis/Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau/Nicolai Ghiaurov/Ambrosian Opera Chorus/London Philharmonic Orchestra/Lamberto Gardelli, Decca
• Verdi: Rigoletto - Lamberto Gardelli/Münchner Rundfunkorchester/Bernd Weikl/Lucia Popp/Giacomo Aragall, 1984 RCA/BMG
• Opera Choruses - Lamberto Gardelli, EMI