The De Reszke Record

[Wolfe]

Edouard de Reszke records on Columbia didn't seem to sound that good to me. They had that typical problems of early acoustic Columbia vocal recordings; the lower registers were not recorded properly;

A problem that remains even on Sony's fairly excellent 1903 Grand Opera Series CD set.

[OrthoSean]

A problem that remains even on Sony's fairly excellent 1903 Grand Opera Series CD set.

Funny that you mention that set, I remember reading someplace that the CD set was full of pitching errors, I've never heard the set, but just this past Sunday, I unearthed the 2 LP boxed set from 1963 Columbia released and cleaned them, I bet they're pitched wrong too, but I haven't played any of it yet. I thought it would be interesting to hear the transfers, at least. I have a couple of the original Grand Opera Columbias, a Schumann Heink and one of the Suzanne Adams discs and they sound really nice in their original pressings.

Sean

[Wolfe]

A problem that remains even on Sony's fairly excellent 1903 Grand Opera Series CD set.

Funny that you mention that set, I remember reading someplace that the CD set was full of pitching errors, I've never heard the set, but just this past Sunday, I unearthed the 2 LP boxed set from 1963 Columbia released and cleaned them, I bet they're pitched wrong too, but I haven't played any of it yet. I thought it would be interesting to hear the transfers, at least. I have a couple of the original Grand Opera Columbias, a Schumann Heink and one of the Suzanne Adams discs and they sound really nice in their original pressings.

Sean

I have that LP box, and in my opinion, the pitch problems are worse. But, the basic sound is actually quite good for the time period. Not heavily overfiltered like so many other LP reissues. As we probably all know, those original Grand Opera discs are so rare...

[OrthoSean]

I thought maybe sometime in the next decade, I might work with those LPs and do a little "re-transferring" and EQ-ing with them just for fun. Hopefully I'll get my other projects at home finished soon and I'll actually have some free time again to get back to the things I enjoy most, machines and records!

Sean

[Lenoirstreetguy]

A problem that remains even on Sony's fairly excellent 1903 Grand Opera Series CD set.

Funny that you mention that set, I remember reading someplace that the CD set was full of pitching errors, I've never heard the set, but just this past Sunday, I unearthed the 2 LP boxed set from 1963 Columbia released and cleaned them, I bet they're pitched wrong too, but I haven't played any of it yet. I thought it would be interesting to hear the transfers, at least. I have a couple of the original Grand Opera Columbias, a Schumann Heink and one of the Suzanne Adams discs and they sound really nice in their original pressings.

Sean

I reviewed that set in my days as a free lancer and I still have the records. And yes, the pitches are all over the map. The Suzanne Adams, the Campanari sides in particular are transferred incredibly fast as I recall, but at the correct speed they both sound very well, Campanari in particular.

Speaking of " Darling Jean" as Melba used to call him, aren't we reasonably sure that he did a few test sides in the Paris studio of HMV in 1908? They were never announced officially as were the Fonotipias and there are no catalogue numbers of course .

[Starkton]

Speaking of " Darling Jean" as Melba used to call him, aren't we reasonably sure that he did a few test sides in the Paris studio of HMV in 1908? They were never announced officially as were the Fonotipias and there are no catalogue numbers of course .

I doubt that he recorded as late as 1908, because his voice was quickly declining and no longer at a level he wished to be preserved for posterity.

Jean had told Emma Eames and Alfred Clark (at the time head of the French Gramophone Co.) in 1904 "that he was really anxious to sing [for the gramophone], but never would do so until some speed regulator and indicator was put upon the machine." Thus, after the introduction of the speed indicator in 1905, Jean recorded for Fonotipia and initially also consented to record for the Gramophone Co. Alas, as far I remember an article I have read (don't ask me the title), he felt uncomfortable that day and cancelled the session - never to return to the Gramophone recording studio again.

[Lenoirstreetguy]

I also have some dim memory of reading an article which indicated that de Reszke had his interest piqued by the stories he heard of the fidelity of the Edison Diamond disc, and was curious about making tests. I know this sounds like an Edison collector's fantasy but I don't THINK I'm making it up. Nothing of course happened because the Edison Diamond Disc wasn't introduced in Europe until after WWI. What may have caught Jean's interest would have been the recording of disc masters by the European Edison studios beginning in 1910: all those operatic sides none of which were ever issued.
I will do some digging on this and see if I can find a citation.

Jim

[Wolfe]

Well, We still have some "echoes" of him on the Mapleson cylinders; I have his "O Paradiso" snippets from Meyerbeer's "L'Africaine" on IRCC 78 dubbing, and it sounds much better compared with other later transfers of the cylinder. Even with all those surface noises and crackles, one can sense a tenor with a well-polished voice and amazing breath control.

De Rezke's 1901 Siegfried cylinder sounds quite good on the IRCC Echoes Of The Golden Age Of Opera LP, very clear. The 1903, not as much.

Don't really know what it has to say about him, one hears a very polished sounding, attractive tenor voice but all too briefly.

[transformingArt]

De Reszke's 1901 Siegfried cylinder sounds quite good on the IRCC Echoes Of The Golden Age Of Opera LP, very clear. The 1903, not as much. Don't really know what it has to say about him, one hears a very polished sounding, attractive tenor voice but all too briefly.

You mean the "Forging Scene" fragment which appeared on IRCC L-7066? That was WRONGLY attributed to Jean de Reszke - it is now believed that the tenor voice on that recording actually belonged to Andres Dippel, and the performance date was (probably) either March 4th, 1902 or January 19th, 1903. There is actually some couple of other "Kosher" cylinders that has Jean de Reszke singing other parts of the Forging scene and the rest of the Opera, but all of them sounds very dim and the surface noise is beyond being tolerable.

Apparently the people who first heard the IRCC dubbing of De Reszke were not satisfied at all - simply read a series of Open letters written by P.G. Hurst on May 1940 issue of The Gramophone Magazine. It was obvious that he was SO DISAPPOINTED! Of course, the first dubbing of the cylinder on the IRCC 78 was dubbed at wrong speed (you should play the record at about 90rpm!), so that could have been affected his views regarding its' sound quality.

I've played my copy of "O Paradiso" fragment on a HMV 193 machine once, and despite the crackles and rumbles, it sounded more impressive than the electrical playback, although the acoustic playback somehow reduced little bit of details on some point.

By the way, according to what I've read from some old issues of The Record Collector (I only read a copy of it years ago when I visited a friend of mine in Richmond, VA), Lieutenant Gianni Bettini actually recorded Jean and Edouard for his own pleasure. I wonder what happened to them; it probably didn't survived the WWI, but I wish what De Reszke had recorded for Bettini, anyway. And what about the "Private Cylinder Recording" that was supposedly discovered among the Wagner's estate in the 1950s? So far, I've never heard a thing about it!

[Lenoirstreetguy]

I posted this in the winter but why not again? It's the TIME magazine report of the IRC release of the De Reszke cylinders. As I said the last time the most interesting line is the footnote to the piece..." Except for a single privately recorded disc belonging to Queen Alexandra of Britain." So it would seem that Alexandra( Edward VII's consort) probably had one of the Fonotipia sides. She was an ardent gramophile and music lover even though she was slightly deaf. So the next time you're talking to Queen Elizabeth ask her to check the attics at Sandringham or Marlborough House. I uploaded a pic with Alexandra and her Kodak. She was quite an ardent amateur photographer and did several exhibitions of her work for charity. I've seen collections and she had a good eye: the pics rise well about the " royal snapshot" ilk.
Jim