9 October 2010
I’ve just made the latest update to my website, after a rather longer hiatus than I expected. As I transferred one or two items, it led me to a kind of theme to follow, and that branched out along some other roads.
I started out planning to transfer a few of my Gramophone Monarch and Gramophone Concert records. These feature Mackenzie-Rogan and the Coldstream Guards in Orth’s Clock store (1906), and the finale of Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony (1908), and Carlo Sabajno conducting various operatic excerpts: the Kermesse from Faust (1906), the servants’ chorus from Don Pasquale (1905), and the Prelude to Act 4 of Carmen (1905). I also recalled that I had one disc from Sabajno’s 1915 complete Cavalleria Rusticana (the opening chorus) and one from his 1919 complete Aida, (the end of the Judgment Scene with Guido Fernandez and Rosita Pagani, and the start of the Tomb Scene, with Valentina Bartolomasi and Enrico Trentini).
This set me off on transferring other recordings of Aida excerpts, as I knew I had a wide range available. So we have:
Sydney Rayner in Celeste Aida, and Otello’s Ora e per sempre (1932);
Eva Turner in Ritorna vincitor and Tosca’s Vissi d’arte and Voi lo sapete from Cavalleria, all with Beecham in 1928;
various ballet sections from Acts 1 and 2 come from a 1943 recording of Herbert Haarth with the Berlin State Orchestra;
Frieder Weissmann conducts the Triumphal March (1930);
Giovanni Inghilleri and Tina Poli-Randaccio sing the Aida-Amonasro duet from Act 3, under Angelo Albergoni (1928), and a couple of Inghilleri’s HMV discs are included too – Tre sbirri and La povera mi cena from Tosca, and Eri tu from Ballo are conducted by Barbirolli (1929), and Pari siamo from Rigoletto again has Sabajno at the helm (1928);
Agustarello Affre and Jane Marignan sing Pur ti riveggo and Morir, si pura e bella in French, and heavily abridged, on a Pathé circa 1910;
a fuller chunk of the Nile Duet is provided in English by Frank Mullings and Elsa Stralia, with Hamilton Harty conducting (1920);
the Judgment scene from Act 4 comes from the abridged 10″ Columbia set c1912, with Andreina Beinat as Amneris and Vincenzo Bettoni as Ramfis.
There are also two unrelated records. Firstly, Stanley Chapple conducts two excerpts from Stravinsky’s Firebird with the Aeolian Orchestra in 1927, and then Franz André conducts his usual Belgian orchestra in Richard Strauss’s Rosenkavalier Waltzes, and Liszt’s Les Preludes (1952).
