1906 EUGENIA BURZIO Giuseppe de Luca Fonotipia Trovatore La Gioconda 78

$

43

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Original 1905 ITALIAN PRESSING FONOTIPIA 11 3/4" record with all the hallmarks of Fonipia: Autographed signatures written in the dead wax under the label and printed on the paper label

Great recording of 19th century Open Chest singing by Eugenia Burzio, from the 1906 Fonotipias w Giuseppe de Luca w piano

master xxPh 2279 D30 AN

ITA: Milano

1906.12.18 Tue

(Hans Gloetzner)

LA FORZA DEL DESTINO (Giuseppe Verdi / Francesco M. Piave)

IV/33: Pace, pace, mio Dio! — Melodia

Pace, pace, mio Dio!

Eugenia Burzio (soprano). …?… (p).

Fonotipia XX 74036, F 5513

master xxPh 2391 D30 AN

ITA: Milano

1907.01.31 Thu

LA GIOCONDA (Amilcare Ponchielli / Arrigo Boïto)

IV/ 6: Ebbrezza! delirio! — Duetto finale

Così mantieni il patto?

Eugenia Burzio (soprano). Giuseppe De Luca (baritone). …?… (p).

Fonotipia XX 74043, F 5513

11.75" 78 rpm record

EXCELELNT MINUS/ VG++ , rare scuffs , plays very quiet

Gioconda has some noise first 2 secs of intro then quiet, distortion on rare top notes, Forza is very quiet but rare blasting on top notes

From http://www.marstonrecords.com:

Eugenia Burzio is known as one of the most famous female interpreters of verismo. She was an actress of gripping intensity whose career centered in Italy and whose recorded legacy closely mirrored her stage career in time and repertoire. Her voice was rich, dramatic and passionate. Like some singers who lived and performed at the cusp of the century, Burzio harkened to the past, using an emphatic open chest voice.

J. B. Steane, in his book The Grand Tradition, allows Burzio some points, but not without some reservation: ôHer recordings show a vibrant voice and a passionate style, which was imaginative and exciting at best but open to many criticisms.ö But, those who can find pleasure in over-the-top commitment and intensity will find much that is admirable, even awesome, in BurzioÆs artistry.

She was a belcantista with a veristaÆs emotional instincts. She can sail not quite imperturbably through complicated gruppetti, yet her attention to the significance of the text is exceptionally insightful. It seems as though she is always singing in italics. Listen, for example, how she varies that freighted and thrice-repeated word ôFatalit?!ö in the piano-accompanied Fonotipia recording of ôPace, paceö. (CD1, Track 8)

Eugenia Burzio was born in Poirino near Turin in what may well have been 1879, but a date as early as 1872 has also been suggested. Her musical aptitude made itself apparent when she was still a child, beginning with serious study of the violin. When she determined to become a singer, she gained a scholarship to the Milan Conservatorio. She made her first stage appearance at the Teatro Vittorio Emmanuele in Turin as Santuzza in 1899, when she was perhaps twenty or maybe twenty-seven. Following on the heels of Gemma Bellincioni and Emma Carelli, Burzio found the overt emotionalism and the more specific diction of such operas as Tosca, Adriana Lecouvreur, and Fedora congenial to her temperament. She was also an actress of gripping intensity, as I learned from Max de Schauensee, who told me that during the first decade of the twentieth century his parents would never dream of missing a Burzio performance at FlorenceÆs Teatro Communale.

Burzio suffered from nervousness and became addicted to substances to help her sleep. On one occasion, according to reports, some combination of drugs caused her to lose her voice for a time. To put this artist in better perspective, it is important to recognize that she was capable of grandeur. The majesty with which she utters the word ôSuicidio!ö at the beginning of La GiocondaÆs Act 4 aria and, indeed, the aura of tragic dignity she lends this whole monologue put other renditions of this aria in the shade. (CD 2, Track 12) The same tragic afflatus endows her Columbia two-sided version of NormaÆs ôDeh! Non volerli vittimeö with a sense of sublime vulnerability. (CD 2, Track 4)

In March 1906, Burzio bowed at La Scala as Katiusha in AlfanoÆs Risurrezione, when that opera was first mounted there. The conductor on that occasion was Leopoldo Mugnone, and appearing with her were the tenor Piero Schiavazzi and the baritone Riccardo Stracciari. Her next role there was Loreley in CatalaniÆs eponymous opera, but only for one performance as she had been recruited into what was optimistically hoped would be the salvaging of FranchettiÆs La Figlia di Jorio. Four days after the short-circuited Loreley she scored a personal triumph as Mila di Codra in La Figlia di Jorio, that opera based upon DÆAnnunzioÆs overcharged drama of peasant life in Abruzzi.

The following year Burzio returned to La Scala, where Toscanini, a returnee himself that season, ushered her into her major repertory. After her early encounters with veristic roles, she moved into more traditional, classic parts, but lavishing upon them the same intensity and immediacy of response that won her her first laurels. Burzio sang Gioconda in what was the first performance of PonchielliÆs opera at La Scala in eighteen years for want of an adequate soprano. Toscanini directed her there in Aida, La Wally, and Cavalleria Rusticana. In December 1907 she sang an enthusiastically received Tosca, also led by Toscanini, and the following February 1908 she enjoyed another successful run of Giocondas. That fall the conductor went to the Met in New York, and Burzio, after visits to Buenos Aires for Gli Ugonotti, returned to La Scala, now with Tullio Serafin at the helm, in PaciniÆs Saffo (20 January 1911). She opened the following season as GluckÆs Armida, and three months later she introduced a triumphant Norma.

On 12 June 1911 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome she sang in the Italian premiere of PuciniÆs La Fanciulla del West conducted by Toscanini. It has been reported that the Maestro was worried about BurzioÆs health at the time and considered replacing her with Carmen Melis, but Burzio sang the entire run of those Roman Fanciullas (nine performances). Later, under Vittorio GuiÆs baton, she introduced FanciullaÆs Minnie to the Teatro Regio in Turin and later sang the same role at the San Carlo, also with Gui. During that Neapolitan season, she further appeared in the title role of CataloniÆs La Wally and as Fleana in LeoncavalloÆs Zingari. Her last performances at La Scala were in a well-received series of Loreleys, compensation for the single outing precipitated by the crisis over La Figlia di Jorio nine years earlier.

Subsequently, her health deteriorated and caused her to interrupt her career. Her final appearances were in PonchielliÆs Marion Delorme in 1919. She died prematurely on 18 May 1922, not yet fifty, of kidney failure, a consequence of her addiction to sleep-inducing drugs, and also, it has been rumored, from complications of a venereal origin.

Eugenia BurzioÆs recorded legacy is one of the most revealing of any Italian soprano of her generation. The Fonotipias, mostly with piano-accompaniment, date from her first period at La Scala. Her Columbias date from the time she was appearing as Saffo and Norma with Serafin. The Path? and Phonodisc Mondial recordings were all made by 1916. Conceding the earliest date conjectured for her birth, 1872, this means she was only 44 at most when she made her last batch of recordings.

Her emphatic use of the open chest voiceùugly to some ears, exciting to othersùharkens back to the nineteenth century, when large-voiced Italian sopranos emphasized the voce di petto register for dramatic and emotional effect, and were expected to do so. Celestina Boninsegna, who belonged to this tradition, referred to her chest voice straightforwardly: ôEra la mia gloriaö she declared. We find a similar emphasis on this vocal resource in BurzioÆs recording of GiocondaÆs ôEcco la barca.ö At the repetition of La CiecaÆs words when she first gives the rosary to Laura (here at the same pitches), the ease and richness with which Burzio sings the low B-flat (on the final syllable of ôE le preghiere adunaö) suggest that her vocal orientation was rather that of a falcon. (CD 2, Track 13) (Her recordings from La Favorita in particular seem to bear this out. Her top C was sometimes skittish.

What to some listeners sounds like an unevenly equalized scale is for a singer of BurzioÆs effusive temperament just one of many colors in a rich palette. For instance, the voluptuous tints she lavishes on her Italian version of GriegÆs æSolvejgÆs SongÆ make it sound more like an amorous summons to an Apennine tryst rather than the lilt of some Norse girl gaily caroling on her Scandinavian heights. (CD 2, Track 17)

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