Claire Dux, with the Franco-Polish name,
was born in 1885 in what was then Bromberg in Prussia and is
now in western Poland. She studied in Berlin and plied her early
trade in Cologne. Her career escalated and by 1909 she was singing
Mimi with Caruso, signing for the Hofoper in Berlin, and taking
engagements to appear for Beecham at the first British Rosenkavalier
at Covent Garden. The war interrupted her career but she was
young enough to resume, albeit patchily, afterwards but friction
led to an estrangement from the Hofoper and she travelled to
America, though not to the Met. Her operatic career then rather
trailed off and she gave a series of lieder recitals before
the Second War. She also made a series of increasingly interesting
marriages – to the writer Imperatori, the actor Hans Albers
and the finally the man always rather gleefully referred to
as “the multimillionaire meat-packing magnate” Charles Swift.
She was a beautiful singer with a technique
that sounds in the main effortlessly effective. The sheer quality
of the voice can be gauged early from the Marriage of Figaro
sides recorded in 1916 for Grammophon. The singing has a fluid
grace and elegance and an appealing timbre. But what it also
shows critically speaking is a weak chest voice – sample the
German language Endlich nacht sich die Stunde where one
feels the disparity in registral strength. Nur zu flüchtig
is similarly beautiful as regards the actual quality of
the voice but there is evidence of rather uneven vocal production
such that the legato is slightly compromised. I don’t think
anyone would feel short-changed by her Weber in terms of timbre,
control or articulacy but perhaps one might in terms of dramatic
projection. For all her many beauties – of tone, of inflection
– there are moments when she comes over as a rather static artist.
This element of remove might possibly explain why she failed
to compete in the burgeoning post-war operatic world – given
that a number of sides here date from 1920 and sound similarly
reserved it might explain why her operatic performances were
limited subsequently to smaller houses.
Her 1911 Königskinder extracts are
valuable and she recorded them early, as the premiere had only
been the previous year in New York. Dux essayed the Farrar role
here and with some success. However she sounds a touch thin
in her 1916 Rigoletto duet with the magnetic Joseph Schwarz
and I think the disparity between his dramatic impersonation
and her rather withdrawn one – though possibly magnified by
the recording technique – reinforces the matter of her depth
of characterisation. But that relative inertness should not
efface the beauty of her voice. The French repertoire reflects
well on her, and strongly suits both her voice and her dramatic
strengths. This was a voice, German in training, and perhaps
better employed in Bizet, Thomas or Gounod.
The transfers are unproblematic, straightforward
and not over-filtered. The small blasting in the Weber is not
representative of the whole. Dux was a memorable singer, not
always convincing theatrically perhaps, but who possessed much
beauty of voice. And in the end that counts for a lot.
Jonathan Woolf
Claire Dux (soprano)
