Mattia Battistini was among the first great opera singers to risk offering their voices to the early gramophone. He was nearly forty-six years old when he made his first group of recordings in 1902 and had been singing to acclaim for more than twenty years. The phonograph was new territory and many famous singers were reluctant to make records. It is impossible to know whether Battistini viewed the making of records strictly as a commercial venture or perhaps he foresaw that recording would actually add luster to his name and preserve his artistry for future generations to appreciate. By the time of his final recording session in 1924, he had made more than 100 published discs, many of which remained in HMV’s catalog until the close of the 78 rpm era. Very little of Battistini was available on long playing records until 1986 when EMI released an impressive seven LP boxed set of his complete extant recordings. In 1997 I began planning a complete compact disc edition for the Romophone label, but only the first two CDs were released before the company’s demise. Finally after eighteen years, Marston is releasing this complete edition, comprising all of Battistini’s extant recordings. Two new items that were unknown at the time of the EMI LP release are included: a test pressing of an alternative unreleased take of the “Te Deum” from Tosca, and an 1898 private cylinder recording of the “Evening Star” aria from Tannhäuser. I should mention that there are several recordings listed in the discography with issue numbers, that have, however, never been seen, not even as test pressings: “Il balen” from Il trovatore; duets from Lucia di Lammermoor, Simone Boccanegra, Rigoletto, and Hamlet; and also the Sextet from Lucia. It is highly unlikely that any of these was ever released, but if a copy ever does come to light, it will be a major find for the world of record collectors.

For this compilation, I have made new digital transfers of each disc from original sources. The first step as always was to locate and select the best possible pressings, which involved the painstaking task of comparing one disc against another for each recording. Fortunately, many metal masters still exist for the Battistini recordings at EMI’s archive. During the 1950s and 1960s the archive offered a special service to collectors whereby new custom pressings of old recordings could be ordered, pressed directly from the masters. This was apparently a fairly well-guarded secret known to only a few collectors, but during this time, many such pristine pressings found their way into private collections and institutional archives. Since Battistini records were highly prized by collectors, many latter-day pressings of his records circulated throughout the collecting community. For this project, I was able to locate over seventy of these discs, which tended to provide the clearest reproduction of Battistini’s voice and the least amount of surface noise. Depending on the condition of the metal master at the time of pressing, most of these discs sound absolutely magnificent, with a few suffering from irreparable distortion, usually a result of metallic corrosion. Where the later pressings were unsatisfactory, I used superior copies of the issued shellac pressings.

After making the appropriate choices, I transferred each selected disc using the optimum stylus size that yielded the best sound, occasionally finding it necessary to use different stylii for various parts of a particular disc. I also took care to adjust the playback speed of each disc to maintain constant pitch. I must mention that Battistini’s recording sessions resulted in widely differing sonic characteristics, making it impossible for me to give his voice a consistent sound.  Particularly disappointing and frustrating are the 1913 records, which lack richness in the bass frequencies, giving Battistini’s voice a hollow and strident sound. Sadly for me there was little I could do to remediate this flaw.

A personal note: When I was about six years old, I was given some old 78 rpm opera records. I immediately fell in love with the voices I heard and asked my mother to find more of the same for me. She took me to various thrift shops where there were always shelves full of 78s for ten cents each, and I began to accumulate a fairly substantial collection. By the time I reached my teens, I had heard and was entranced with the voices of Caruso, Melba, Tetrazzini, Ruffo, McCormack, Galli-Curci, Ponselle, and many others. I heard the name Battistini spoken by older music lovers my parents introduced to me, but I had never found any of his records. I did buy one LP of Battistini on a budget label, but the sound was so poor that I could derive nothing of his artistry: to me he was just another baritone. At the time I was consumed primarily with recordings of pianists and orchestras under great conductors, so I simply pigeonholed Mr. Battistini for later consideration.

Just out of college, I became a member of a small organization in New York City called the International Piano Library. One day in 1974, I took the train to Manhattan in order to visit the library and meet its director, Gregor Benko. Expecting to find a middle-aged frumpy academic, I was astonished to discover an affable music lover, only seven years older than I, with a prodigious knowledge of historic recordings and no pretentions. He invited me to stay for several hours to hear recordings of the great pianists of the past and I felt a euphoria I shall never forget. After hearing Ignaz Friedman’s exquisite record of Chopin’s op. 55 E-flat nocturne, Mr. Benko said that he wanted me to hear something even more beautiful. He then placed on to the turntable Mattia Battistini’s record of Tosti’s “Ancora.” Although I had heard records of Tosti songs before, I had never heard this one and had certainly never heard anything like Battistini’s singing. This great artist had taken this undistinguished song and made of it a work of sublime artistry. I had absolutely no idea that a human voice could weave such a spell. I will never forget that day’s experience, which has set me on the path of collecting records by golden age singers for the past forty years. It is my sincere hope that this compilation will reach a young audience of music enthusiasts, giving them a first chance to hear one of the greatest singers on record, perhaps awakening them to the magic that changed my life so many years ago.

© Ward Marston, 2015