I must confess that I had only a very nebulous idea of Emilio
de Gogorza’s voice, career and place in operatic history before
I undertook to review this double disc, but some listening and
research have opened up to me a fascinating talent and an unusual
individual.
I was first aware of him through his impressive recorded duets
with Marcella Sembrich, Enrico Caruso – to whom de Gogorza introduced
the idea of a recording contract - and Emma Eames, his second
wife whom he married in 1911. In December 1905 he had gone on
tour with Eames and returned smitten. A further tour in Europe
the following year cemented their affair and after protracted
and scandalous divorce proceedings he secured his freedom from
his first wife at a price rumoured to be $100,000. Eames, too,
had obtained a divorce in 1907 from celebrated portrait painter
Julian Story. De Gogorza and Eames themselves eventually divorced,
acrimoniously – she was not, by all accounts, an easy woman
and he evidently had a roving eye, despite his urbane demeanour
and immaculate manners.
But enough gossip; it is his artistry which counts here. He
had a smooth, powerful baritone and exceptional linguistic gifts
which would have lent themselves to the performance of opera
were it not for the fact that de Gogorza was short, myopic and
had a pronounced limp; his photographs reveal a dapper little
man with a preposterous waxed moustache and elegant sartorial
taste. A possibly apocryphal anecdote tells us that his only
attempt to sing opera resulted in his taking a tumble into the
prompter’s box. It is in any case certain that he avoided the
stage and made a long and prosperous career as a recitalist
in concert performances and from recording prolifically – over
a thousand recordings whose sustained popularity undoubtedly
helped to fund the considerable personal outgoings resulting
from his complicated personal life. He was recording from 1900
– and thus a recording pioneer – into the electrical period,
when he remade some of his best-selling acoustic discs. He then
retired in 1930 from recording and the concert platform and
turned to teaching at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia,
where among his voice students was future composer Samuel Barber.
He was effectively the house-baritone for the Victor Talking
Machine Company for a quarter of a century, and all the records
here are from that source.
Like Caruso, his voice was made for recording, as long as -
again like, Caruso - its amplitude could be tamed by the primitive
acoustic process. His versatility in style and languages and
his crystalline diction allowed him to become one of the first
genuine crossover artists, sometimes recording under various
pseudonyms to avoid over-exposure. The selection of songs here
eschews the more egregiously populist hits like the parlour
song “Juanita” and leans more towards art songs – although there
are no Lieder and some more light-hearted and folk numbers are
included.
It is ironic that so successful and admired an artist should
now be familiar to collectors and opera buffs mainly through
his duets with more widely known singers and that so few previous
releases have been devoted to his solo work. We have only five
duets in this collection and none with Caruso, presumably because
they have already been given wide currency. This compilation
certainly goes a long way towards rectifying the omission and
presents us with ample evidence of de Gogorza’s range and ability.
It is extraordinary to think that this disc allows us to listen
to recordings most of which were made around a hundred years
ago; it really is a window – well, a sonic time-capsule – onto
the past. On track 2, we hear the extraordinary, fluting voice
of de Gogorza’s first touring partner Marcella Sembrich. When
they were on tour, you may be sure that he was very much the
junior partner, but by this stage in 1907, two years off Sembrich’s
retirement from the stage, they would have been on more equal
terms. On four other tracks we hear the voice of Emma Eames,
which is not dissimilar to that of Sembrich. De Gogorza is always
suave and stylish; Don Giovanni’s Serenade is a model of seductive
charm and restraint. He has excellent breath control, a firm
tone and an alluringly fast, vibrant vibrato. I am very amused
by the nasal, falsetto sneers with which he caps each strophe
of that demonic little ditty of an aria for Méphistophélès.
It gains all the more by its juxtaposition with the succeeding
aria for Wolfram from “Tannhäuser”, sung by de Gogorza with
grave beauty. It is followed by an intense characterisation
of Rigoletto, a pitiless Conte di Luna and a tortured Renato,
in which aria he exhibits a wonderful legato – versatility,
indeed. It would be otiose to go through every aria methodically;
suffice to say that everything is expertly delivered and every
character vividly differentiated.
The second disc of songs is a different bag of pretzels, but
de Gogorza brings the same verbal acuity and musical nuance
to the merest tune. He is never rhythmically flaccid or indulgent
and ranges easily between the stately pathos of “Caro mio ben”
and jaunty, dotted rhythm Mexican folk songs. Spanish, English,
French, Italian and Neapolitan dialect are all sung with aplomb.
Caruso, who was not as skilled a linguist, also made gold of
this kind of repertoire, perhaps under de Gogorza’s guidance
and advice. You will have your favourites as I have mine – which
is, I think, the delicate “Bergère Légère”. There are curiosities,
such as Elgar’s “The Pipes of Pan”, so typical of the “faery
whimsy” that gripped England around the turn of the century
and into the 1920s. The last item, Debussy’s “Romance”, is the
only electrical recording and allows us to hear more of his
exquisite mezza voce, his idiomatic French and very little deterioration
in quality of tone.
Given that this is such a welcome and thoughtful offering from
Nimbus, it’s a shame that their quality control did not extend
to spotting the usual errors in the track-listings and, more
seriously, the fact that the date of de Gogorza’s death is printed
in large font in the notes and on the back of the CD as 1935
– although John Steane gets it right in the text of his article:
1949.
The sound is the result of usual Nimbus “Ambisonic” process,
whereby the original shellac discs are recorded when played
through a horn in a small, purpose-built to scale concert hall.
The result is warm, pleasing and largely hiss-free with a welcome
reverberance, but not too much.
I have been unable to find dates or biographical details for
the song composers Zapata and Nicto on CD 2 and would welcome
any reader being able to supply these.
I also acknowledge my indebtedness for some of the information
above to articles in the Nimbus CD notes by John Steane and
by Uncle Dave Lewis on the allmusic website.
Ralph Moore
Details
CD 1 (arias):
Charles GOUNOD (1818 - 1893)
1. Faust - Dio possente [2:24]
Ambroise THOMAS (1811-1896)
Hamlet
2. Doute de la lumière* [4:18]
3. O vin dissipe la tristesse [3:47]
Jules MASSENET (1842–1912)
4. Le roi de Lahore - Promesse de mon avenir [3:52]
5. Hérodiade - Vision Fugitive
[4:13]
Emile PALADILHE (1844 – 1926)
6. Patrie - Air du Sonneur [4:04]
Charles GOUNOD (1818 - 1893)
7. Faust - Dio Possente [4:25]
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART (1756 - 1791)
8. Le nozze di Figaro – Crudel! Perchè finora # [3:06]
Don Giovanni
9. Là ci darem la mano # [3:22]
10. Serenata [1:56]
Hector BERLIOZ (1803 – 1869)
11. La damnation de Faust - Sérénade [1:57]
Richard WAGNER (1813-1883)
12. Tannhäuser – O du, mein holder Abendstern [3:41]
Giuseppe VERDI (1813 - 1901)
13. Rigoletto – Pari siamo [4:06]
14. Il trovatore – Mira di acerbe lagrime # [3:48]
15. Un ballo in maschera – Eri tu [4:40]
Eugeno DIAZ DE LA PENA (1837 – 1901)
16. Benvenuto Cellini – De l’art splendeur immortelle [4:10]
Ruggero LEONCAVALLO (1857 - 1919)
17. Pagliacci – Prologo [3:40]
Jacques OFFENBACH (1819 – 1880)
18. La chanson de Fortuno [2:28]
CD 2 (songs):
Sebastián YRADIER (1809 – 1865)
1. La Sevillana [3:00]
Salvatore SCUDERI (1845 – 1927)
2. Dormi pure [3:34]
Émile PALADILHE (1844 – 1926)
3. La Mandolinata [2:57]
Giuseppe GIORDANO (1748 – 1798)
4. Caro mio ben [3:55]
Sebastián YRADIER (1809 – 1865)
5. La Paloma [4:06]
Mexican Traditional
6. Noche serena [2:45]
Fermín Maria ALVAREZ ( ? – 1898)
7. El Celoso [2:15]
José Manuel ZAPATA
8. La luna [3:03]
Tito MATTEI (1841 – 1914)
9. Non è ver [4:29]
E.A. MARIO (1810 – 1883)
10. Comme se canta a Napule [2:57]
NICTO
11. Teresita mia [3:00]
English Traditional
12. Drink to me only with thine eyes [3:12]
Edward ELGAR (1857 – 1934)
13. The Pipes of Pan [4:05]
Jean-Baptiste FAURÉ (1830 – 1914)
14. Crucifix # [3:04]
André-Joseph EXAUDET (1710 – 1762)
15. Menuet [2:50]
Jean-Baptiste WEKERLIN (1821 – 1910)
16. Bergère Légère [2:08]
Claude DEBUSSY (1862 – 1918)
17. Romance: Voici le printemps [3:12]
* with Marcella Sembrich
# with Emma Eames
rec. 1903 – 1928 
