The final round of 78 RPM recordings in Sir John Barbirolli: The Complete Warner Recordings is devoted primarily to excerpts from the opera repertoire, with ventures into both art song and vocal music that could be classified as “traditional entertainments.” As might be guessed, no opera is recorded in its entirety. Only one CD is devoted to a single opera, Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot; and it provides excerpts from two different performances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in May of 1937. The casting for both of these performances is the same with the exception of the role of Liù, which is sung by Mafalda Favero on the tracks recorded on May 6 and features Licia Albanese from the May 10 performance.
Where sound quality is concerned, the seven CDs in this grouping are much less impressive than those of orchestral and concerto performances. Some of that difference may be due to recordings made during an actual performance, rather than in studio; but there are still a generous number of vocal tracks that enjoyed the advantages of studio recording. If I had to speculate on why the shortcomings are so evident, I would guess that the problems can be traced back to singers that did not quite know what to do with themselves in front of a microphone. In both of the preceding collections, all the musicians just had to “follow Barbirolli’s lead,” so to speak; and, as a result, even “star power” soloists, such as Artur Rubinstein and Jascha Heifetz, fared very well at their respective recording sessions. Vocal work, particularly when it is narrative, requires more “immediate” attention from the soloists.
I also have to confess that almost all of the vocalists in this collection were unfamiliar to me. Indeed, if they did not become better known through the wider distributions of their recordings, this may have been because they, themselves, were not that all satisfied in how they heard themselves captured electronically. That said, I think it may be worth considering, as an example, the one vocalist in the collection that I knew well by name (other than Albanese, whom I came to know through her work with Arturo Toscanini). That vocalist was the tenor Lauritz Melchior.
Melchior recorded nine tracks with Barbirolli (two with the New Symphony Orchestra and the other seven with the London Symphony Orchestra) in studio sessions in both 1930 and 1931. On the other hand, between 1935 and 1940, Melchior and Kirsten Flagstad recorded Wagner excerpts for RCA in the Academy of Music in Philadelphia working with three different conductors, Eugene Ormandy, Edwin McArthur, and Hans Lange. (Fun fact: the only music from Die Walküre came from the first act, with Siegmund’s “Winterstürme” followed by Sieglinde’s “Du bist der Lenz.” These were recorded in separate sessions and were probably released either separately or as two sides of a 78 RPM disc. However, the Pearl CD of these sessions takes advantage of the smooth instrumental transition to present the two arias as a single episode!) There is no question that the recordings of Melchior in Philadelphia are far more convincing than those of him in London.
Finally, I would suggest that none of the content of these seven CDs was in Barbirolli’s “comfort zone.” Most likely the British producers thought that the content selections would make for a “good sell,” regardless of who sang them or how well they were sung. Thus, it is possible that all of these tracks were recorded more out of a sense of duty than out of personal interest in the content. As a result, these seven CDs may best be regarded as historical artifacts, rather than vehicles for absorbing listening experiences.
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