1935 CLAUDIA MUZIO Mefistofele L'Altra Notte / Donaudy O DEL MIO AMATO COLUMBIA
$
30
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Description
A series of great OPERA, Oratorio, Lied and Art Song Records from early G&Ts to World War II recordings on 78 rpm Victrola Records
Click this link for more great RICHARD WAGNER Records in my other listings!
Click this link for more great Opera and Vocal Records in my other listings!
How can one even try to put into words the phenomenon of Claudia Muzio.
The greatest singer-actress of her time (think about Callas without the histrionics and a much better voice)
in her last and only electric Columbia session Rome, 1935 in two recordings of unbelievable beauty:
Arrigo Boito (1842 - 1918)
Mefistofele
L’altra notte in fondo al mare
Claudia Muzio, soprano
Roma, 1935
Stefano Donaudy (1879-1925) - "O DEL MIO AMATO BEN"
Columbia, Milano LCX25
Roma, 1935
Orig Issue UK Columbia 12" 78 rpm record
Condition: Better than EXCELLENT PRISTINE, plays very quiet faintest hiss
A SUPERB COPY
First a note: A singer who tries this aria needs to have a good upper extension and a firm bottom to the voice. Farrar tried once (on a 1906 Berlin G&T and couldn't) Alda could do it beautifully.
Now this slow song is full of dread in minor key and then come these extreme up and down scales that have to sound like unconscious outburst of emotion free of artifice. This is not a coloratura piece but just emotions set in music. What can I say Muzio is incomparable. At the end you are deeply disturbed about the state of mind of the protagonist.
The best evidence is when you read from other singers of her time: there are always singers and then there is MUZIO on a godess-like pedestal. Singers and audience alike always went gaga over her passionate impersonations of the famous opera heroins.
To present a quote from my favorite website - cantabile-subito.de where you will also find soundfiles:
The tenor Giacomo Lauri-Volpi wrote of Muzio “singing with that unique voice of hers made of tears and sighs and restrained interior fire.” The best years around 1930 were probably her best precisely the years in which she did not record! Between 1924 and 1934 there is a ten-year gap. The missing period would seem to be the very one in which her interpretations had matured while her voice was still in prime condition. The early records may lack the intensity and creativeness of her later recordings and in the famous Columbias one is aware of some physical limitations (uneasy high notes flatness mannerisms in style and enunciation vowels!) but there is a pathos an inner committment and charm in her singing that is immensely moving and touching. Only a few sopranos equalled her in this aspect of emotional involvement.
Unfortunately because of stage politics she never had a big career at the Met but excelled in Chicago and San Francisco. That in part prevented her from a major recording career.
We are fortunately enough that someone put her performance of Act I Tosca at the 1932 opening of the new built SF opera house on disc. Other than that precious little has Muzio recorded: There are a smattering of early Pathes some great 1920 Edisons (on auction now) then nothing for a long time and then a year before her death about 20 sides recorded in Rome (in auction now).
Unbelievable as it is Muzio did not record after 1920 and only a year before her death in 1934/35 did she record a few electric sides in Rome.
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