1904 TITTA RUFFO MILAN 14" PATHE ETCHED ANNOUNCED 78rpm

$

100

A series of great  classical orchestral and instrumental performances by major conductors, composers and instrumentalists.

First 1904 recording of famous Italian Baritone TITTA RUFFO, recorded originally for cylinder issue. These recordings were made before his first 1907 Milan G&Ts.

Announced in Italian " ... per la Casa Pathe"

With Piano Accompaniment.

ROTOLI: La Mia Bandiera

Duet with Tenor Amadeo  Bassi (1874 - 1949), who appears only on these rare Pathes, and a few very rare Fonotipias:

La Boheme:  O MIMI TU PIU

  
14" French PATHE recording  of a great recording

In original sleeve

Rare example of PATHE's  etched label inside out early oversized 14" (35 cm) sapphire vertical record with the original high quality stitched pathe paper sleeve.

Condition Record: loud and clear recording.  EXCELLENT MINUS, clean and undamaged. Light greying of a few top notes.

Condition Sleeve: Tan colored heavy paper sleeve with stitched seams GREAT, right side open and tattered, small tears on top and cut out, bottom split

NOTE: Due to size, record can only be combined with other 14" for shipment. Postage calculated by weight.

Titta Ruffo (June 9, 1877 - July 5, 1953), was an Italian opera singer, generally regarded as the greatest Italian baritone of his generation - or any generation since. Known as the "Voce del leone" ("voice of the lion"), he was renowned for his enormous voice, thrilling high notes and dramatic force on stage. Other baritones, even the most eminent, were in awe of Ruffo's voice: Giuseppe De Luca, a baritone star in his own right, said of Ruffo, "His was not a voice, it was a miracle;" (although not often published is the second part of De Luca's conclusion "...which he [Ruffo] bawled away...") and Victor Maurel, the creator of Verdi's Iago and Falstaff, said that the notes of Ruffo's upper register were the most glorious baritone sounds he had ever heard.

 Biography
Born Ruffo Titta in Pisa (he later changed his name for the stage), Ruffo was the son of an engineer. He studied voice with several teachers, but basically his vocal method was self-taught. He made his debut in 1898 at the Teatro Constanzi in Rome as the Herald in Wagner's Lohengrin. After a slow start, his career took off in the early 1900s and he quickly achieved international renown. His major debuts were in London (1903), Milan (1904), Lisbon (1907), Buenos Aires (1908) and the Paris Opéra (1911). Ruffo made his American debut in Philadelphia in 1912 and sang extensively in Chicago. He reached the Metropolitan Opera relatively late in his career, in 1922 as Figaro in Rossini's The Barber of Seville. He sang 46 performances at the Met from 1922 through 1929.

 
Russo as Rigoletto.Ruffo's repertoire included most of the major baritone roles in French and Italian opera, including Rigoletto, Di Luna, Amonasro, Germont, Tonio, Rossini's Figaro, Hamlet, Iago, Carlo in Ernani, Don Giovanni, Barnaba, and Renato in Un ballo in maschera. He was also renowned for several baritone roles in operas largely forgotten today: the title roles in Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet and Franchetti's Cristoforo Colombo, Cascart in Leoncavallo's Zazà and Neri in Giordano's La cena delle beffe. Ruffo's signature roles were Rigoletto and Hamlet.

Ruffo's voice was a huge instrument, powerfully resonant and rich with an exceptionally brilliant upper register all the way up to high A. It has been compared to burnished bronze, and indeed there was more than a little metal in his sound. In the middle register the voice was rather dark in color. His lower notes were comparatively weak and lacked the resonance of his higher tones. The voice, over all, was richly colorful and 'prismatic'.

Like his famous tenor compatriot, Enrico Caruso, Ruffo was said to embody a new style of singing in which power, rich tone and declamatory force eclipsed the previous generation's premium on vocal grace, subtlety and finesse - according to the respected critics John Steane[1] and Michael Scott [2] this is not a true reflection of the two singers' techniques which were far from crude. Notwithstanding his great popularity, Ruffo's vocal approach, however, was not universally admired, and he was compared unfavorably by some critics with the great lyric baritone Mattia Battistini. Ruffo's detractors accused him of bellowing and seeking to overpower audiences with sheer force of sound, but his records show him to have been capable of great subtlety and nuance, and fine technical control, when he thought it appropriate to the inteepretation at hand.

Ruffo was a prolific recording artist and made over 130 records, acoustic and electric, first for Pathé Frères in Milan in 1904, and then exclusively for Victor (the "Gramophone Company" in England) beginning in 1907. Like Caruso, Ruffo's voice recorded exceptionally well. It was so rich and resonant that even through the primitive acoustic recording process, much glory remains to be heard. He continued recording into the electric recording era after 1925, but at far as one is able to judge (many titles remained unpublished) most of those later discs caught him past his prime:

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Pathe had an early start in the vertical disc record business in 1905, issuing them in a new proprietary format of vertical recordings that used a wide shappire stylus, which lead to greater fidelity and reduction of wear.

While other companies like Victor and Columbia also experimented at the same time with oversized disks, their approach was to use a larger size and slower speed to increase playing time.

Pathe, however, based on the cylinder business model (different diameter cylinders of same length, but with louder and more fidelity replay on larger sizes), followed the same idea with these early etched label records: They were available in many sizes from 7" to the incredible 20" records, all playing from 90 - 120 rpm basically of the same length, but with vastly increased volume on the larger sizes.

These records were only issued in EUROPE primarily for coin-op and public exhibition machines in Cafes and Dance halls, were the increased volume was vital to cut through the din of commercial business.

Also, based on the assumption that most pieces begin softly with a loud climax at the end, the inside-out format was chosen to provide greater fidelity for the loud passages, and idea that was later re-used with the Talking Pictures Vitaphone system

For this reason, oversized Pathe records are rather scarce, and because they did not fit into the standard 12" albums and rack, few of them survived.

By 1914, Pathe reverted to a more conventional format of outside-in paper label records at 80 rpm in the conventional smaller 25 cm, 27 cm and 30 cm sizes

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A note to grading Victrola/ Pathe/ Shellac 78 rpm discs:

Pls note that I try to be extremely conservative and consistent in my grading. All records are graded with the same criteria, regardless of genre.

I noticed that my grading seems to be more conservative than what I have seen from other sellers, so here some notes.

Surface VISUAL GRADING:

EXCELLENT - clean and shiny, as new. E minus is the same, with light scuffing.

Very Good Plus - Clean, with a little more scuffing. Some grooves spots may have some light greying. Little if any distortion.

Very Good - a clean copy, some scuffing, some greying on a single groove or a few small groove bands. Enjoyable record, maybe light distortion on some top notes.

=> Everything up to here is a great and enjoyable record

Very Good Minus - May have areas of visible wear, may have some scuffing or dulled surface. Still a great record, but ticks, pops and some distortion.

Good Plus - a worn and scuffed copy. May have other defects separately stated. Plays well, but with noise, may require filtering.

All other defects (if any: Chips, cracks, scratches, lamination cracks, label damage, needle digs) will be stated SEPARATELY.

Number of Records
 ( Edison Diamond Discs count as TWO RECORDS)

Media Mail US

1 Record or 1 Diamond Disc

$ 5.95

Up to 2 Records

$ 6.95

Up to 5 Records (2 DD)

$9.50

Up to 10 Records (5 DD)

$11

Up to 15 Records (7 DD)

$13.50

Up to 20 Records (10 DD)

$15.50

So, if you want to generate your own bill:

Count the records that you have won, for albums count each record. Remember that a Diamond Disc counts as TWO records, e.g. 2 Diamond Discs count as 4 records -> 10$ shipping charge.