Fonotipia was a powerhouse
of operatic recording. Established as
a minor player, a part of the International
Talking Machine Company of Berlin, it
began as an offshoot of Odeon but by
1906 it was established as a company
in its own right. Fonotipia was, technically
at any rate, based in Milan, though
it did make forays to Berlin and Paris,
and many of the leading Italian singers
went into its studios to record. In
all there are, we’re told, 6,712 matrices
and for this celebration to mark the
company’s centenary (which fell in 2004)
Symposium has whittled this down to
twenty-two representative items spanning
less than a decade. All the recordings
here were made between 1904 and 1911.
There were some exclusions,
Symposium having done extensive work
with certain Fonotipia artists in the
past. So you won’t find Litvinne, Escalaïs
or Maurel but you will find equally
important artists such as Anselmi and
Zenatello whose discs weren’t available
for earlier Symposium release. The roster
is impressive enough as it is and the
transfers are in this company’s accustomed
"limited intervention" house
style. Certainly as a conspectus it
offers a particular feel for Fonotipia’s
imperatives in vocal art and preserves
the voices of artists prominent on the
operatic stage.
Barrientos is heard
in Delibes with plenty of coloratura
tricks and constant virtuoso flourishes,
a combustible start to this survey,
no doubt, if an imperfect one musically.
Giannina Russ is here with her voice
light but exquisitely shaded at the
top in Verdi – and it should be remembered
that many of these discs are contemporary
artefacts. Verdi had died only the previous
year when Russ and Luppi recorded from
La Forze del Destino. Stracciari’s
own Verdi is taken from a rather rough
copy and he was later to take part in
a complete Rigoletto in 1927. Back in
1904 the voice is obviously that much
more youthful and impressive. Studio
recording was in its relative infancy
and so one hears how in Talexis’ Vidal
how dimly she emerges from the grooves
relative to other more forward sounding
discs. She’s not quite at her best here
– slightly unsteady. For admirers of
Heddle Nash one can hear his Italian
teacher, Giuseppe Borgatti. There’s
certainly something of Borgatti’s Italianate
lyric ease in Nash’s singing and Borgatti,
who later went blind and retired from
the stage, emerges as an important figure.
Note his Mastersinger extract – very
slow but very impressively sustained.
There’s the Little and Large
show in operation in the extract from
Mugnone. Sung by the magnificently sonorous
bass Adamo Didur we find him accompanied
by the weedy violin of G Nastrucci;
unusually it’s just the two of them
and even odder, given the inherent imbalance,
it works.
Maria De Macchi had
a fine, florid technique though she
is squally at the top in Donizetti.
Zenatello is surprisingly uneven in
Ponchielli’s Cielo e mar! and
is heard to better effect in the Verdi
trio with Burzio and Petri. Though this
is another rather "distant"
recording he outclasses Eugenia Burzio’s
somewhat one-dimensional singing. There’s
some blasting on this copy at climaxes.
Bonci seems to be rather taken for granted
these days but he was a major figure
and recorded prolifically. We have the
advantage of some unusual repertoire
form him as well – an aria from Frederic
d’Erlanger’s Tess. He’s given
an orchestral accompaniment as well,
which is also out of the ordinary, and
he emerges as a communicative and virile
artist. Theodor Bertram was an important
figure and sounds it as well in I Pagliacci
but the Destinn Schubert doesn’t show
her at her finest – though the fact
she is recorded in Lieder is of real
interest of itself.
Whilst the vast majority
of Fonotipia recordings were operatic
they did make a few excursions into
other waters. Three violinists recorded
for them – Kubelík, von Vecsey
and Thibaud and it’s the Frenchman we
hear in a Paris disc of 1904/05 playing
Bach with characteristic fluidity. The
La Scala orchestra also recorded excerpts
and we can appreciate their fine clarinettist
in the Ponchielli La Gioconda Intermezzo
and there is also Roger-Miclos sparkling
in Mendelssohn, one of the very few
pianists on the Fonotipia books. There
was also recitation and the acme of
that art is provided by Victorien Sardou,
commanding in his reading of Patrie
from his own Dolorès et le
Duc.
All the artists receive
potted biographies and all the discs
are provided with full matrix and issue
numbers, as one would expect from Symposium
who have contributed a great deal to
the discographic history of this company.
Clearly this is a specialist issue but
the net is cast widely and there are
some epoch making performances and artists
here in this centenary celebration of
a great pioneering record company.
Jonathan Woolf
SYMPOSIUM 1261 [77.12]
