Verdi: Songs for Voice and Piano

A real rarity, this. Verdi, famous for his operatic masterpieces, also found time to scale down his stage sentiments to the recital hall (or, in his time, the salon) to write songs. Throughout the 19th century, Italian opera composers wrote songs for the salon as part of their stock-in-trade. The texts were mostly conventional, harping more often than not on the string of unrequited love, sometimes venturing into the naively picturesque; while the accompaniment would be confined to simple thrummings suggestive of a guitar or an orchestral reduction. The settings would vary in scale from the strophic ‘romanza’, to the full length ‘scena ed aria’. In Italy, the salon was never far from the theatre. One of the 20th-century’s greatest singers – Margaret Price – went into the studio with Australian-born pianist Geoffrey Parsons to record music relatively neglected by recording companies, then, as now. And the results are at once, charming and revelatory. A considerable rarity, the disc returns to circulation on Eloquence.