
Originally Posted by
gvn
I think people have 3 main reasons for cutting the aria:
1. Some people choose to perform the original Italian version of the opera. The aria wasn't in that version.
2. Other people choose to perform Gluck's revised French version or Berlioz's version, but their star can't manage the intricate fioriture of this particular aria comfortably, so they simply cut it.
There's a close parallel with Rossini's Barber of Seville. It has a big elaborate tenor aria near the end ("Cessa di più resistere"). But very few tenors can manage the coloratura, so in practice it's usually cut. (In the Gluck opera also, tenors are more likely to dodge the aria than mezzos, because they're less likely to be able to cope with it.)
I suspect, if we had a full list of cuts in standard operas, we'd discover that just about every aria has been cut by someone or other. Reportedly when Jean de Reszke sang Aida, he used to omit "Celeste Aida." One of the worst cases in recent decades was Benjamin Britten's production of Idomeneo, which omitted the title character's big aria altogether because the role was sung by Peter Pears, who was vocally unsuited to it in every possible respect. This is kind of like omitting "Nessun dorma" from Turandot, or the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah.
3. But there's also a third reason: some conductors & directors omit this Gluck aria because they consider that it's dramatically inappropriate and that the opera works better without it.
In practice, many conductors don't strictly follow one version anyway. They take some items from version A and some from version B, and construct their own patchwork. (The Solti/Marilyn Horne recording of Gluck's Orfeo is a particularly striking example of this.)
This leads me to ask another question: Has the Berlioz version of Orphée EVER been recorded complete and unaltered in its original French? It certainly hadn't been 20 years ago.