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| Edouard de Reszke |
In 1903, a cultural arms race was on. The Victor and
Columbia recording companies were battling it out for a dominant share of the “high-end”
record market. At the height of the enthronement of Western culture as a beaux
ideal, opera was considered the most prestigious of the arts. Its combination
of music and drama was seen as the ultimate synthesis of forms, and opera
singers were globally-known celebrities in a manner not seen again until the
days of Pavarotti.
This recording was part of a set of releases by seven
Metropolitan Opera stars – Suzanne Adams, Antonio Scotti, Giuseppe Campanari,
Charles Gilbert, Marcella Sembrich, Ernestine Schumann-Heink, and Edouard de
Reszke. The Victor company had sent its representative to Europe to obtain
recordings by continental opera stars. Columbia beat them to the punch by
commissioning recordings in New York. The singers were well paid, and the discs
were correspondingly more expensive. Avid listeners shelled out $2 a disc,
twice what the going rate was for a record in 1903, and the equivalent of more
than $50 today.
De Reszke was a bass from Warsaw; his strong singing and acting
skills propelled him through an illustrious three-decade career (he often sang
with his brother, the equally talented and noted tenor Jean). He sings this
aria from Act III of the once-popular romantic/comic opera “Martha” by
Friedrich von Flotow, which premiered in 1844. The bass plays the hero’s best
friend, and gets to implement a little comic relief here and there. It’s a
drinking song, rendered here in Italian, as many German and French operas of
the 19th century found themselves translated into Italian for the convenience
of the predominantly Italian-trained singers.
Though Columbia won the battle, Victor won the war. Under
its Red Seal label, most of the first half of the century’s great artists would
choose to record for them – starting with its superstar, Enrico Caruso. Caruso
would make “Martha” a huge hit for the Met in 1906, and very familiar Flotow
melodies such as “Ach, so fromm” and “the Last Rose of Summer” would become
familiar cultural staples of the period.
As an aesthetic record, it’s lacking. The same year de
Reszke recorded his three sides, of which “Canzone” is his best effort, he
retired from singing. His breath support is wobbly, his tone is flat. Only his
phrasing and trills remain to remind us of what he must have sound like at the
peak of his career.
The
National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all
the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up
next: ‘Uncle Josh and the Insurance Agent.'
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