Recently in Recordings

Henry Purcell, Royal Welcome Songs for King Charles II Vol. III: The Sixteen/Harry Christophers

The Sixteen continues its exploration of Henry Purcell’s Welcome Songs for Charles II. As with Robert King’s pioneering Purcell series begun over thirty years ago for Hyperion, Harry Christophers is recording two Welcome Songs per disc.

Anima Rara: Ermonela Jaho

In February this year, Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho made a highly lauded debut recital at Wigmore Hall - a concert which both celebrated Opera Rara’s 50th anniversary and honoured the career of the Italian soprano Rosina Storchio (1872-1945), the star of verismo who created the title roles in Leoncavallo’s La bohème and Zazà, Mascagni’s Lodoletta and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.

Requiem pour les temps futurs: An AI requiem for a post-modern society

Collapsology. Or, perhaps we should use the French word ‘Collapsologie’ because this is a transdisciplinary idea pretty much advocated by a series of French theorists - and apparently, mostly French theorists. It in essence focuses on the imminent collapse of modern society and all its layers - a series of escalating crises on a global scale: environmental, economic, geopolitical, governmental; the list is extensive.

Ádám Fischer’s 1991 MahlerFest Kassel ‘Resurrection’ issued for the first time

Amongst an avalanche of new Mahler recordings appearing at the moment (Das Lied von der Erde seems to be the most favoured, with three) this 1991 Mahler Second from the 2nd Kassel MahlerFest is one of the more interesting releases.

Max Lorenz: Tristan und Isolde, Hamburg 1949

If there is one myth, it seems believed by some people today, that probably needs shattering it is that post-war recordings or performances of Wagner operas were always of exceptional quality. This 1949 Hamburg Tristan und Isolde is one of those recordings - though quite who is to blame for its many problems takes quite some unearthing.

Women's Voices: a sung celebration of six eloquent and confident voices

The voices of six women composers are celebrated by baritone Jeremy Huw Williams and soprano Yunah Lee on this characteristically ambitious and valuable release by Lontano Records Ltd (Lorelt).

Rosa mystica: Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir

As Paul Spicer, conductor of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir, observes, the worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary is as ‘old as Christianity itself’, and programmes devoted to settings of texts which venerate the Virgin Mary are commonplace.

The Prison: Ethel Smyth

Ethel Smyth’s last large-scale work, written in 1930 by the then 72-year-old composer who was increasingly afflicted and depressed by her worsening deafness, was The Prison – a ‘symphony’ for soprano and bass-baritone soloists, chorus and orchestra.

Songs by Sir Hamilton Harty: Kathryn Rudge and Christopher Glynn

‘Hamilton Harty is Irish to the core, but he is not a musical nationalist.’

After Silence: VOCES8

‘After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music.’ Aldous Huxley’s words have inspired VOCES8’s new disc, After Silence, a ‘double album in four chapters’ which marks the ensemble’s 15th anniversary.

Beethoven's Songs and Folksongs: Bostridge and Pappano

A song-cycle is a narrative, a journey, not necessarily literal or linear, but one which carries performer and listener through time and across an emotional terrain. Through complement and contrast, poetry and music crystallise diverse sentiments and somehow cohere variability into an aesthetic unity.

Flax and Fire: a terrific debut recital-disc from tenor Stuart Jackson

One of the nicest things about being lucky enough to enjoy opera, music and theatre, week in week out, in London’s fringe theatres, music conservatoires, and international concert halls and opera houses, is the opportunity to encounter striking performances by young talented musicians and then watch with pleasure as they fulfil those sparks of promise.

Carlisle Floyd's Prince of Players: a world premiere recording

“It’s forbidden, and where’s the art in that?”

John F. Larchet's Complete Songs and Airs: in conversation with Niall Kinsella

Dublin-born John F. Larchet (1884-1967) might well be described as the father of post-Independence Irish music, given the immense influenced that he had upon Irish musical life during the first half of the 20th century - as a composer, musician, administrator and teacher.

Haddon Hall: 'Sullivan sans Gilbert' does not disappoint thanks to the BBC Concert Orchestra and John Andrews

The English Civil War is raging. The daughter of a Puritan aristocrat has fallen in love with the son of a Royalist supporter of the House of Stuart. Will love triumph over political expediency and religious dogma?

Beethoven’s Choral Symphony and Choral Fantasy from Harmonia Mundi

Beethoven Symphony no 9 (the Choral Symphony) in D minor, Op. 125, and the Choral Fantasy in C minor, Op. 80 with soloist Kristian Bezuidenhout, Pablo Heras-Casado conducting the Freiburger Barockorchester, new from Harmonia Mundi.

Taking Risks with Barbara Hannigan

A Louise Brooks look-a-like, in bobbed black wig and floor-sweeping leather trench-coat, cheeks purple-rouged and eyes shadowed in black, Barbara Hannigan issues taut gestures which elicit fire-cracker punch from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

Alfredo Piatti: The Operatic Fantasies (Vol.2) - in conversation with Adrian Bradbury

‘Signor Piatti in a fantasia on themes from Beatrice di Tenda had also his triumph. Difficulties, declared to be insuperable, were vanquished by him with consummate skill and precision. He certainly is amazing, his tone magnificent, and his style excellent. His resources appear to be inexhaustible; and altogether for variety, it is the greatest specimen of violoncello playing that has been heard in this country.’

Those Blue Remembered Hills: Roderick Williams sings Gurney and Howells

Baritone Roderick Williams seems to have been a pretty constant ‘companion’, on my laptop screen and through my stereo speakers, during the past few ‘lock-down’ months.

Bruno Ganz and Kirill Gerstein almost rescue Strauss’s Enoch Arden

Melodramas can be a difficult genre for composers. Before Richard Strauss’s Enoch Arden the concept of the melodrama was its compact size – Weber’s Wolf’s Glen scene in Der Freischütz, Georg Benda’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Medea or even Leonore’s grave scene in Beethoven’s Fidelio.

OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »

Recordings

08 Oct 2004

Roger Pines on historic recorded performances of Bizet

Georges Bizet’s Carmen has a distinguished recording history in both complete performances and excerpts. From this ever-popular work, as well as the composer’s Les pêcheurs de perles, there are considerable lessons to be learned from the early decades of recording in terms of balancing dramatic urgency with the needs of the drama. Many singers have gotten by in Bizet with beauty at the expense of text, but a Solange Michel or a Charles Dalmorès demonstrates indisputably that Bizet does not come alive unless the text is commanded in depth.

YOUR RECORDED HERITAGE: Singers in music of Bizet

by Roger Pines, Editorial Dramaturg, Lyric Opera Chicago

bq. Georges Bizet's Carmen has a distinguished recording history in both complete performances and excerpts. From this ever-popular work, as well as the composer's Les pecheurs de perles, there are considerable lessons to be learned from the early decades of recording in terms of balancing dramatic urgency with the needs of the drama. Many singers have gotten by in Bizet with beauty at the expense of text, but a Solange Michel or a Charles Dalmorès demonstrates indisputably that Bizet does not come alive unless the text is commanded in depth.


Sopranos

At the turn of the century, Carmen's title role was sung nearly as frequently by sopranos as by mezzos. The most famous Carmen of the 1890s was a soprano, Emma Calvé (1858-1942), whose stage repertoire ranged from Cavalleria's Santuzza to Hamlet's Ophélie! Listening to her Carmen today, we're aware of extraordinary liberties of phrasing. At the same time, Calvé projects a personality of overwhelming charm and appeal - not for nothing was her name synonymous with Carmen for an entire generation of operagoers.

Carmen was first recorded complete in 1908, in German. The first complete French-language recording was made four years later with a dramatic soprano, Marguerite Merentié, (1880 - ? ). She was a Tosca, a Brünnhilde, but completely at ease with Carmen's music. One finds a significantly more restrained presentation than with Calvé, yet the characterization comes to life. The dialogue is included in her recording, and she makes the most of it.

Of the many available versions of Leïaut;la's aria from Pecheurs recorded pre-1950, few now available are by French sopranos. An exception is the performance of the uniquely versatile Ninon Vallin (1886-1961), who also recorded the arias of both Carmen and Micaela (her stage repertoire included both roles). One learns something from every Vallin recording, for she is elegant musicality personified and her performances have an astute sense of proportion. Vocally she is immensely enjoyable, possessing a richer, more colorful lower-middle register than any other French lyric soprano of her generation.

Mezzo-sopranos

Conchita Supervia (1895-1936) was made for Carmen. This Spaniard had a great flair for French texts, and a unique way of "tasting" Carmen's words so that each inflection remains forever in one's memory. Like Calvé, the voice exudes vivacity (not surprisingly, she was one of her era's few outstanding Rossini singers), but the darkness necessary for Carmen is there, too. Supervia's distinctive vibrato has always been an acquired taste, but one capitulates immediately to her total, phrase-by-phrase involvement in the gypsy's character.

After Supervia, Germaine Cernay (1900-1943) and Solange Michel (1912 - ?), both of whom recorded Carmen complete, come as a shock. They may strike listeners as cool to a fault, but beneath the coolness there is also danger. Neither is in any way prone to the exaggeration of which listeners could accuse their predecessor, Calvé, and they do not force the voice at extremes of range as one hears so often with today's Carmens. Their subtle way with the text is a joy in itself, and they each have the right Carmen timbre, neither too "fruity" nor too light-toned. Michel, by the way, was the Carmen in France during the 1940s and '50s, singing the role about 700 times.

Tenors

Few topflight French - or rather, "francophone" -- tenors today can even adequately handle Don José's music, but there were many 75-100 years ago. A major figure internationally, Charles Dalmorès (1871-1939), sang a wide variety of spinto repertoire and was a favorite in both France and America. His timbre did not ravish the ear as did those of his greatest Italian contemporaries, but he had enormous musicality, intelligence, a sense of line to do justice to the Flower Song, and true dramatic intelligence. In later generations came the exciting Corsican José Luccioni (1903-1978); Michel's José on records, the French-Canadian Raoul Jobin (1906-1974), a lighter voice than Luccioni who took on all the major "heavy lyric" French parts; and nearly everyone's French spinto tenor of choice, the manly Georges Thill (1897-1984), whose "La fleur" is not currently available, alas.

When it comes to floating Nadir's aria and any other lightish French tenor aria you can mention, they come no better than Edmond Clément (1867-1928); his mastery of floated half-voice is breathtaking. In the great line of tenors in this repertoire, his heirs are Spain's Miguel Villabella (1892-1954), a tenor of seemingly unlimited top voice, with near-native timbre and diction; and one of Canada's greatest gifts to singing, silver-voiced Léopold Simoneau (1918 - ), who was just as renowned in Mozart as in French roles.

Baritones and Basses

The Toreador Song is not a piece we hear today with the degree of elegance that would have been expected of any French baritone singing this music a century ago. A genuine vocal aristocrat was Henri Albers (1866-1925), a Flemish artist who established himself in France. Albers, who sang Escamillo in the complete recording with Merentié, had an extraordinarily assured technique, and did not emphasize the toreador's machismo at the expense of the vocal line.

Other baritones who could do justice to the music of both Escamillo and Zurga were two contemporaries, Charles Cambon (1892-1965) and Jean Borthayre (1902-1984). The latter had greater intensity of utterance, the former a warmer and even more voluminous instrument. In the next generation, Gerard Souzay (1920-2004) was a much lighter voice than those two, but his is nevertheless a passionately convincing interpretation of Zurga's aria. Thanks to a very large range, the sumptuous-voiced bass Marcel Journet (1867-1933) was able to take on the duet with Nadir in a memorable performance opposite Clément.

By far the best-known number from Bizet's La jolie fille de Perth is Ralph's drinking song, "Quand la flamme de l'amour," which many French singers have recorded brilliantly. One of the first was bass-baritone Jean-Francois Delmas (1861-1933), an imposing figure with vocal amplitude to match. The creator of Athanael in Massenet's Thaïaut;s and the first to sing four major Wagner parts at the Paris Opéra, Delmas possessed a degree of vocal grandeur that one can appreciate even in primitive turn-of-the-century recorded sound.

Essential Recordings

  • Calvé: "The Complete Known Recordings," Pearl #9482
  • Merentié, Albers: Carmen, Marston #52019
  • Vallin: "Opera and Mélodie," Pearl #9948
  • Michel, Jobin: Carmen, Aura Classics #1117
  • Supervia: "In Opera and Song," Nimbus #7836
  • Clément: "The Legendary French Tenor," Minerva #51 (incl. Pecheurs duet with Journet)
  • Dalmorès: Recital, #89506
  • Villabella: "Prince of French Lyric Tenors," VAI #1132
  • Cambon: operatic recital, Malibran #CDRG 122
  • Souzay: "Airs d'Opéras," Philips
  • Delmas, "Treasures of the French Voices: The Bass" Minerva #45

*This article originally appeared in Voices, OPERA America's official bulletin for singers, and is reproduced here by permission of OPERA America.*

*Opera Today Also Recommends:*
cover

*Here are some samplings from Les pecheurs de perles:*

Au Fond Du Temple Saint with Clément and Journet (1912)

Je Crois Entendre Encore with Villabella (1932)

Send to a friend

Send a link to this article to a friend with an optional message.

Friend's Email Address: (required)

Your Email Address: (required)

Message (optional):