It’s wearying to
keep saying it but Marston has produced another twofer that
will powerfully appeal to the vocal collector. Intrinsic disc
rarity is one good reason, quality another. When the production
standards are so high – of transfers, of booklet biographies,
discographical information (no texts obviously) there is little
or nothing at which to cavil.
And why should one
want to? There are four contraltos here. Eugenia Mantelli bears
the greatest weight. She was born in Florence c.1860 and graduated
from Milan in 1877. She sang widely – Buenos Aires, the Bolshoi,
made her Met debut in 1894 and her Covent Garden entrance two
years later. She sang Wagner - Lohengrin and Die Walküre included
– as well as the more obvious French and Italian repertory and
by the age of forty was sharing the stage with such as Melba,
Nordica, de Reske, Plançon and Ancona. By 1905 she was touring
with her own opera troupe but things seem to have fallen apart
for her personally and professionally around 1910 – a Lisbon
offer fell through, her second husband cut off contact, one
son was mentally disabled and another died. Mantelli herself
taught for a while but died in 1926.
The US. Zonophones
date from 1905-07. Certainly they don’t reveal a transcendent
technique and her coloratura is occasionally ear opening in
its navigation through the passagio but she does have a battery
of devices to enliven her singing. In una voce poco far we
hear quick portamenti, pert trills and, despite the indifferent
piano accompaniment in Ah l’alto ardour from La Favorite,
we can hear the good, forward production albeit, and I don’t
think this is a reproduction question, one whose deployment
of dynamics was far too sanguine and limited. These earliest
sides hint at another weakness, which was a certain lack of
expression in her singing.
She’s better oddly
in the French repertoire on the evidence of these sides. Her
Mignon has personality and her Faust is idiomatic with registers
well integrated. Her Carmen does show some intrusive breaths
– it’s not her best moment on disc – with registral breaks into
the bargain. The extract from La Gioconda finds her on
better form – it’s not from the same session, and allows one
to hear how fine she could be and to extrapolate as to the impression
she clearly made on stage. She employs rubati, portamenti and
a certain stentorian command in the aria antiche – Lotti
would have been amazed. Her Tosti Good-bye is well versed
in fluid portamento but is otherwise rather under-characterised
and the climax is thin. The evidence of these twenty-eight
sides is somewhat equivocal as to her standing but it’s marvellous
to have this corpus of discs hunter-gathered together in this
way.
There are also the
three rare Marianne Brandt Artistikal/Pathés – the former were
two-minute cylinders, the latter being the same sides but transferred
to disc form. The Viennese Brandt was a great singer, admired
by Liszt, given lessons by Wagner and who created Waltraute
in the 1877 world premiere of Die Götterdämmerung. She
had sung at the Met in 1884 but she retired at forty-eight to
teach in Vienna and died in 1921. The recordings were therefore
made long after she’d given up concert and stage work. There
may only be three sides but what sides! We can hear her powerful
chest register, commanding and technically intact, in the Meyerbeer.
The piano is heard to better advantage in the Donizetti . It’s
true that she rather rolls off the trill here and we can hear
some limitations but she was sixty-three and it was entirely
understandable. Otherwise the tone is for the most part very
steady, the training sounds Italianate as much as German, and
stylistic matters are admirably attended to. The Schumann is
a beautiful performance, subtle as to metrical matters, fluid
and graceful.
Guerrina Fabbri
(1866-1946) was born in Ferrera and had a far-flung career –
South and North America as well as La Scala, Madrid, Lisbon,
and other expected places. She did visit Russia, apparently
successfully, but didn’t sustain a London career. She was sufficiently
highly thought of for Verdi to consider her for a role in the
premiere of Otello but Boito, whom he sent to hear her,
was only half way impressed. His comments on her ignorance of
Rossinian style do seem to be borne out by one of two gaucheries
in her recordings, which were made for G & T in Milan in
1903. There are eight sides here. She has a very strong personality
with a highly developed chest voice though we can hear how it
is rather florid and overdone in Brindisi. The tone quality
itself remains very much a question of preference but in the
second attempt at Bellini’s Ascolta…Se Romeo t’uccise she
is certainly dramatic if not always technically precise.
The fourth and final
contralto is Rita Fornia, born Regina Newman in San Francisco
in 1878. She studied in Berlin, contracted to Hamburg opera,
debuted in 1901, studied further in Paris with Jean de Reske
and returned to America in 1903. She was at the Met by 1907-08
and singing at the premiere of Horatio Parker’s Mona
the following season. But marriage put a break on her career
and she faded from the limelight and died in 1922. She proves
herself in these thirteen 1910-12 sides to have been a most
expressive and impressive singer. The voice was quite light
but fluid; the technique was excellent, and stylistically she
shows Fabbri a turn of heels, though of course their repertoires
were rather different. She shows a real affinity with the French
style and her reserved charm can best be savoured in the Chopin/Viardot-Garcia
arrangement – beautifully refined and eloquent. She used her
voice with great taste and discretion.
So, four contraltos
on two discs - the first time Marston has done such a thing.
It’s a richly enjoyable set, with some real rarities, and even
when the singing is not at the highest level, it’s nevertheless
revealing of performance style and practice. Splendidly transferred
as well.
Jonathan Woolf
With instrumental
and orchestral accompaniment 
