Giuseppe
VERDI (1813 - 1901) Caro Nome
(Rigoletto) (1851) [3.51] (5)
Giacomo PUCCINI
(1858 - 1924)
Si, mi chiamano Mimi (La Boheme)
(1896) [4.21] (5)
O Soave Fanciulla (La Boheme) (1896)
[3.25] (1, 5))
Vissi d’arte (Tosca) (1900) [4.21]
(5)
Donde lieta usci al tuo grido d’amore(La
Boheme) (1835) [3.09] (5)
Charles GOUNOD
(1818 - 1893) Air de bijoux (Faust)
(1859) [3.09] (5)
Giuseppe VERDI
(1813 - 1901) Ah! Fors’e lui…Sempre
libera (La Traviata) (1853) [4.20]
(5)
Francesco Paolo
TOSTI (1848 - 1916)
Goodbye [4.17] (5); La Serenata
[3.47] (2)
Felice BLANGINI
(1781 - 1841) Per valli, per
boschi [2.15] (3, 5)
Herman BEMBERG
(1859 - 1931) Un ange est venu
[3.04] (3, 5)
Reynaldo HAHN(1875
- 1947) Si mes vers avaiet des ailes
[2.20] (2)
Wofgang Amadeus
MOZART (1756 - 1791) Voi che
sapete (Le nozze de Figaro) (1786)
[3.15] (5)
Ambroise THOMAS
(1811 - 1896) Mad Scene (Hamlet)
(1868) [7.53] (5)
Luigi ARDITI
(1822 - 1903) Se saran rose [3.08]
(5)
Gaetano DONIZETTI
(1797 - 1848) Mad Scene (Lucia
di Lammermoor) (1835) [4.07] (4,
5)
Henry BISHOP
(1786 - 1855) Lo! Here the Gentle
Lark [3.05] (4, 5)
George Frideric
HANDEL (1685 - 1739) Sweet Bird
(L’Allegro, il Penseroso et il Moderato)
(1740) [4.23] (4,5)
Francesco Paolo
TOSTI (1848 - 1916) Mattinata
[2.20] (6)
Before we listen to
these recording, perhaps we should read
a description of Melba’s voice which
was written, in 1931, by the veteran
American critic W.J. Henderson; remembering
her Metropolitan debut when "the voice
was in the plenitude of its glory" he
said her voice "has been called silvery,
but what does that signify? There is
one quality which it had which may be
comprehended even by those who did not
hear her: it had splendour. The tones
glowed with a star-like brilliance.
They flamed with a white heat."
If we then start listening
to this disc we are liable to be puzzled.
What we hear can be described as silvery,
but splendour or star-like brilliance?
It is illuminating to listen to ‘O soave
fanciulla’ where Melba duets with Caruso.
As on many of his recordings, Caruso’s
voice sounds vivid, we feel that he
is in the room with us. By contrast,
Melba sounds cool and distant. The primitive
recording technology loved Caruso’s
voice but it did not do justice to many
of his soprano colleagues. Not just
Melba, listen to many of Caruso’s duets
and ensembles and it is frequently the
sopranos who seem to lack vividness
and immediacy.
So, to a certain extent,
we must take Melba on trust. Another
point is the change in styles in singers.
Melba’s voice has that laser-sharp focus
which she shared with many singers from
the period and later; something which
can be heard in singers like Isobel
Baillie, Eva Turner and Frida Leider.
This makes it difficult to estimate
how large Melba’s voice was. Judging
from her repertoire, it must have been
pretty substantial. After all she sang
Elsa and Elisabeth (both in Italian)
and even sang Brünnhilde at the
Met, albeit with spectacular lack of
success. This headstrong foray into
Wagner, as remarkable as Isobel Baillie’s
single performance of Act 2 of ‘Tristan’,
is the modern day equivalent of Natalie
Dessay or Emma Kirkby venturing into
this repertoire.
All the recordings
on this disc were made in March 1907
for the Victor Talking Machine Company;
this is the first of 3 discs that Naxos
is issuing covering all of Melba’s Victor
records from the period 1907 to 1916
in new restorations by Ward Marston.
Melba was around 46 when these recordings
were made, but her voice was notoriously
long-lived; her final gala at Covent
Garden (in 1926, when she was in her
mid 60s) was recorded and her excerpts
from ‘La Boheme’ display the familiar
silvery voice in a remarkable state
of preservation.
What these recordings
do display are Melba’s clarity and bell-like
purity, her ability to spin long phrases
and her magical trill. She does not
characterise her performances, she is
always Melba, but she can colour and
inflect her voice. The operatic arias
concentrate on Melba’s core repertoire,
‘Rigoletto’, ‘La Boheme’, ‘Tosca’, ‘Faust’,
‘La Traviata’, ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Lucia di
Lammermoor’. The fioriture in ‘Caro
Nome’ are sung in a fast, untidy manner
and this untidy passagework re-occurs
in other arias. I found her two excerpts
from ‘La Boheme’ magical, but was less
enamoured of ‘Vissi d’arte’ because
her manner seems too cool for the role.
She is better at naivety and innocence
and seems too self possessed to throw
herself at a man just for love. But
to many of her contemporaries she was
the epitome of the operatic heroine,
they had no difficulty believing in
her.
Her excerpt from Act
1 of ‘La Traviata’ made me very curious
about how she would cope with Act 3,
which requires something rather more
than a coloratura soprano and many contemporary
light-voiced sopranos have had difficulty
making the transition. Here again, though
we come to the problem; I am characterising
her voice as light because it sounds
that way on these discs because of the
agility and focus. Was there something
else, something more which was not captured
by the recordings? We will never know,
and that is Melba’s tragedy.
It is in the French
repertoire where I have always thought
that the match between voice (as perceived
on record) and music is best. Represented
here by the Jewel Song from ‘Faust’
and both parts of Ophelia’s Mad Scene
from ‘Hamlet’, it displays Melba at
her best. Though the closeness of the
recording means that one or two odd
vocal mannerisms are caught as well.
One final operatic aria is a curiously
matter of fact ‘Voi che sapete’, but
Mozart is not a composer which one associates
with Melba.
Accompanying the operatic
arias is a selection of songs, by composers
as various as Tosti, Bishop, Handel
and Hahn. Song repertoire of this period
can be uninteresting to modern ears,
but in the songs Melba seems to let
her hair down a little and deliver performances
which have an animated charm; in Tosti’s
‘Mattinata’ she even accompanies herself
on the piano. One item amongst the songs
does warrant closer attention, Melba’s
charming rendition of Reynaldo Hahn’s
‘Si me vers avaient des ailes’, a song
rather above the common run of ballads
that she recorded.
This is a disc for
the convinced admirer or for those interested
in earlier styles of singing. The combination
of the surface noise, early recording
techniques and Melba’s strikingly different
vocal technique mean that the unprepared
listener is likely to need some perseverance
before the disc reveals its riches.
Robert Hugill
Nellie Melba (soprano) 
