12 CD - Label: Supraphon - 112136 - - - Soloists: Emmy Destinn, Enrico Caruso, John McCormack, Karl Jörn, Giovanni Martinelli, Giovanni Zenatello.
Arias and Duets—L'africaine, Aida, Un ballo in maschera, The bartered bride, La boheme, Carmen (including a complete recording; sung in German—see below), Cavalleria rusticana, Dalibor, Dog Heads, Faust (incl. complete recording; German—see below), Der fliegende Hollander, La forza del destino, Der Freischatz, La Gioconda, II Guarany, Les huguenots, La juive, The kiss, Lohengrin, Madama Butterfly, Mignon, Nazarene, Le nozze di Figaro, Pagliacci, The Queen of Spades, Robert le diable, Rolando di Berlino, Rusalka, Salome, Samson et Dalila, Tannhauser, Tosca, Tristan und Isolde, II trovatore and Die Zauberflote; songs by Bach/Gounod, Dvorak, etc.
An unequalled set. 12 CDs of this exquisite singer. First recordings ever done of Faust and Carmen (1908)
Putting Emrny Destinn to one side for the moment, let me first draw attention to the complete operas. The Faust and Carmen of 1908 were not quite the first operas to be recorded in (more or less) their entirety, having been beaten to it by the Milan Pagliacci made in the previous year. They were, nevertheless, the first full-length operas, and in the quality of their casting they set a higher standard than was maintained in most of the comparable ventures that followed. Both are sung in German and that tends to marginalize them in the historical view; yet they do afford an insight, even by virtue of their German-ness. Faust, unsurprisingly, crosses the frontier much more easily than Carmen, but in both it is interesting to hear how very clearly defined the national schools were in those days and how well they corresponded in general to national character.
The performances come up remarkably well. Bruno Seidler-Winkler was the record company's house conductor and accompanist for many years: a good practical musician who knew what the problems were and got them sorted out. All the participants sound as though their hearts are in it, and they work with zest as well as care for accuracy. Karl JOrn is the tenor in both, and a great asset. In the opening of Faust the depth of his tone is immediately impressive, and it soon becomes obvious that he has grasped very clearly the fact which many must have found difficult to accept, that, though this is a sound recording, a singer has to act with the voice as if in the theatre. As Don Jose he is one of the few who in the Flower song rise softly to the B flat, which he then swells and softens again. The Mephistopheles is Paul Knilpfer, for many years principal bass in Berlin (also London's first Baron Ochs). It is fascinating to hear him take the Serenade in an almost throwaway style, as though leaning against a lamp-post with half-closed eyes. His is an utterly Germanic voice, whereas the Escamillo, Herrmann Bachmann, a Bayreuth Wotan in 1896, has a quite Italianate vibrancy. And Minnie Nast (the original Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier) is an exquisite Micaela.
Gramophone 1994.
