Today I will write about some of elderly gentlemen in my music collection, preserved on record in a full spring of their youth for posterity, the way they once were.
It was curiosity that brought me to them, although the choice was far from random as I have heard and enjoyed all three of them on "Nimbus Prima Voce" compilations and I knew perfectly well what to expect - a magnificent presentation of golden voiced ART.
Beniamino Gigli happened to start exactly at the time of unexpected death of world's greatest tenor and star of New York's Metropolitan Opera House, Enrico Caruso.
Nobody could ever replace lovable, chubby Neapolitan whose fame coincided with invention of gramophone records and thanks to them he was known and loved internationally, but young Gigli was a fair discovery, being already in demand in Italian opera houses and his international break was probably just a matter of time. A son of shoe-maker, Gigli had a perfectly natural, much sweeter and lighter sound than Caruso and truth to be told, personally I like him even more. This excellent "Prima Voce" compilation is focused on years 1918-1924 just as he started his international career and shows that at the age of 28 he was a true, original artist without need to copy anybody. Repertoire included here is classic, operatic fare, Puccini, Donizetti, Leoncavallo and such, with a dash of popular Neapolitan songs and occasional beautiful surprise like "Un di all' azzurro spazio" by Unberto Giordano that would have impressed even Caruso himself.
Just like heroic, booming voiced Ezio Pinza was completely unfairly remembered for his later Broadway roles and Hollywood musicals, Austrian tenor Richard Tauber is nowadays remembered for his excursions in popular operettas by Franz Lehár. It was by no means all he ever did but those recordings sold so well that majority of listeners probably couldn't care less for his more serious work as he became so popular as entertainer (and even made some movies where his limping and squinting were overshadowed by sheer charisma). By all accounts a true artist with sophistication and wide knowledge (he studied composition and conducting) Tauber put elegance, warmth and heart in everything he did, be it any operetta "schlager" or singing under baton of Richard Strauss himself. For some reason I had not explored Tauber's popular, operetta sides as yet but I am more than happy with this compilation of his operatic works recorded between 1920 and 1928 where he shines in Mozart, Puccini, Korngold and (gasp) Wagner (of all people) - it is a instantly recognisable voice, no matter what he did, the sign of a true original.
Jussi Björling performed as a boy with his father and brothers in "The Björling Male Quartet" but lost both of his parents at the age of 16, after which he was granted stipend in Stockholm's Royal Opera House from where his magnificent voice eventually catapulted him to stardom. Collected on this CD are some of his earliest Swedish-language classical recordings (Verdi, Puccini, Leoncavallo, Mascagni) and the most striking of them all is traditional Swedish folk song "Ack, Värmeland du sköna" that he does with such gentle yearning, quite impossible to resist. The repertoire here covers his recordings from 1930 to 1938 when he was already member of Metropolitan Opera House in New York. I have heard him also in two recordings of "Cavalleria Rusticana" (with Milanov and Tebaldi, respectively) and must admit its one of the best tenor voices I have ever came across, it is the type of sound I have no problem adjusting or understanding anything, its simply love at the first listening. Definitely strange that such a beautiful, shining Bel Canto voice comes from a Swedish singer, but than his father was also opera singer and apparently both his son and grandson inherited the talent, so it must have been running in the family. Hear and marvel.
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