The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

For those of you with a taste for opera.

[youtubehd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3em_wogRaE[/youtubehd]

Thanks. Great videos done with an obviously good quality camera.

I have this record. It has an unusually long introduction that isn't normally part of this piece. They must have wanted to make the rather short piece a bit longer for the Diamond Disc.

melvind wrote:Thanks. Great videos done with an obviously good quality camera.

I have this record. It has an unusually long introduction that isn't normally part of this piece. They must have wanted to make the rather short piece a bit longer for the Diamond Disc.

Thanks Dan, I think you are right. Even then they only used about 3 minutes of the potential 4:45 or so available on a side.

Bruce, That's a beautiful A-250 in a beautiful home too and a great record! Thanks!

Valecnik wrote:

melvind wrote:Thanks. Great videos done with an obviously good quality camera.

I have this record. It has an unusually long introduction that isn't normally part of this piece. They must have wanted to make the rather short piece a bit longer for the Diamond Disc.

Thanks Dan, I think you are right. Even then they only used about 3 minutes of the potential 4:45 or so available on a side.

There was enough room to include "questa o quella" on the same side lol

Steven

Thanks for sharing such a beautiful opera selection. We often hear it performed by Caruso, However Edison had some great artists that recorded opera, Bonci being one of them.

Bonci did it for Columbia, too, likely some years earlier:

And even earlier, in 1905, he recorded it for Fonotipia.

Viva-voce wrote:And even earlier, in 1905, he recorded it for Fonotipia.

Same matrix as Columbia, or different?

gramophone-georg wrote:

Viva-voce wrote:And even earlier, in 1905, he recorded it for Fonotipia.

Same matrix as Columbia, or different?

Different matrix--the Columbia above is pressed from a 10-inch matrix recorded in New York in January 1913, although the photo is of a Latin-American pressing. The Fonotipias are 10 ¾ inches in diameter, recorded in Milan. Actually, there are two Fono versions that I am aware of. The first was recorded in 1905 with piano accompaniment and released under catalogue number 39081. The second version is from 1908 with orchestra, catalogue number 92220.

Comparisons between the two Fono versions are interesting. In the 1905 version, Bonci ends the aria as written--no cadenza, no concluding high note, but still a lovely lyrical performance with impressive control of "diminuendi." In the 1908 recording, he adds a cadenza and high note, neither of which really come off very well, and the unfortunate band accompaniment doesn't help matters any lol.

Obviously he must have been influenced by Caruso's recordings of the aria. Caruso, in his first version from 1903 on Zonophone, also ends the aria minus cadenza and high note, but in the 1904 and 1908 versions, the aria ends as we know with his famous cadenza. And in my opinion, NO ONE I have ever heard has equalled Caruso's fluency, élan, strength, flexibility, and accuracy in singing that marvelous cadenza. He tosses it off with ridiculous ease!

Steven