Brandt, Fabbri, Mantelli, Fornia
The Contralto Voice

“Her voice was ever soft,
Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.”

(Shakespeare, King Lear, Act V Scene III)

In a letter of 1852 to Luigi Crisostomo Ferrucci, Rossini declares: “You ask me how it is that the contralto almost never figures among the principal parts in composing…. The contralto is the norm to which voices and instruments should be subordinated in a fully harmonized musical composition…. What is best is to work on the middle strings, which always manage to be in tune. On the extreme strings, one loses as much in grace as one gains in force; and from abuse they tend toward paralysis of the throat, turning as an expedient to declaimed singing — that is, forced and toneless.” (Quoted in Herbert Weinstock, Rossini, a biography, London, Oxford University Press, 1968, page 253.) Rossini means not only to stress the fundamental role of the contralto voice in music, but to remind all singers that the most expressive and melodious singing is done in the medium range of the voice, and extremely high and low notes are to be considered as ornamental and not to be incessantly resorted to, and especially not with force.

The contralto voice has become rare; rarer, it seems, than it was two hundred years ago. It might seem logical to suppose that the most common voices would be the medium range ones — mezzo-sopranos and baritones - but today tenors outnumber baritones in our singing schools, and one might find twenty sopranos to one contralto. In the eighteenth century nobody wanted to sing higher or louder than anyone else: beauty of voice and expression (of which agility was a part) were the qualities sought. By the beginning of the nineteenth century less aristocratic audiences were encouraging tenors and sopranos to sing higher, and in his letters to his wife from Italy Nourrit complains that the singers were now constantly singing as loudly as they could and did not bother with the ancient art of embellishment ( see Henry Pleasants, The Great tenor Tragedy — The Last Days of Adolphe Nourrit, Amadeus Press, Portland, Oregon, 1995). However, surely it is indicative that among the best-loved singers of all times were contraltos such as Clara Butt and Kathleen Ferrier, Ernestine Schumann-Heink and Louise Homer, Anastasia Vialtseva and Nadeshda Obukhova, who became singers of national importance, whose lives and deaths were followed in the press as if they were royalty. This is perhaps because of the warm and sympathetic qualities of the contralto voice — Rossini compared it with the vox humana stop of the organ. Maybe more of today’s mezzo-sopranos would be revealed as true contraltos if they developed the chest register and limited their excursions above the stave to the head register, instead of forcing the medium register up.

In Voci e Cantanti (Florence, 1871, reprinted by Arnaldo Forni, Bologna, page 121) Enrico Panofka waxes lyrical about the contralto voice:
“It is a common mistake to think of the true low contralto as a masculine voice. No: this voice, noteworthy for its sweet, tender, and sometimes melancholy timbre, lends itself to the role of the mature, good and sensitive woman; a woman who at the same time is endowed with such force of character and energy that she is able to endure the heaviest moral sorrows with resignation, and open her heart to political enthusiasm to the extent of becoming a martyr to her own heroism. But this heroism is not that belonging to the warrior, but rather that of the Roman matron and of many Italian women who, in these times of ours, have been able to defy imprisonment, and who have seen their own sons die for the holy cause of their country, without lifting up their voices against Providence.”

For some contraltos, the temptation to defy nature and force the voice up into soprano regions has been irresistible. Lord Mount-Edgecumbe, in his Musical Reminiscences of an Old Amateur, London, W. Clarke, 1827, tells a cautionary tale about Isabella Grassini, who may have been the first internationally celebrated diva who made a deliberate attempt to transform herself from a contralto into a soprano. Of her first appearances in England in 1803 he writes (pages 94-5):
“With a beautiful form, and a grace peculiarly her own, she was an excellent actress, and her style of singing was exclusively the cantabile, which became heavy à la longue, and bordered a little on the monotonous: for her voice, which it was said had been a high soprano, was by some accident reduced to a low and confined contralto. She had entirely lost all its upper tones, and possessed little more than one octave of good natural notes; if she attempted to go higher, she produced only a shriek, quite unnatural, and almost painful to the ear.” Then we learn (page 133) that
“Grassini returned in 1814, but she was no longer what she had been. Her beauty indeed was little diminished, but her acting was more languid and ineffective ……. Her voice too was changed: she had endeavoured to regain its upper part, but in so doing she had lost the lower, and instead of a mellow contralto, it was become a hoarse soprano.”

The greatest contralto of the nineteenth century, Rossini’s pupil Marietta Alboni, also succumbed to temptation but with results not so permanently fatal. In his Thirty Years’ Musical Recollections, London, Hurst and Blackett, 1862, Vol. II, pages 9-10, Henry Fothergill Chorley recalls her:
“Hers was a rich, deep, real contralto, of two ocatves from G to G — as sweet as honey — but not intensely expressive; and with that tremulous quality which reminds fanciful speculators of the quiver in the air of the calm, blazing, summer’s noon. — I recollect no low Italian voice so luscious.
“Since that day the genial contralto has, herself, changed singularly little — save in consequence of attempts made to extend her voice; and these (after its register is settled) must impair its tone…….
“By way of enlarging the circle of her attractions, she resolved….upon the experiment of extending her voice upwards ……. (an) experiment never to be tried with success, except, perhaps, in early youth.- The required high notes were forthcoming. But the entire texture of the voice was injured: its luscious quality, and some of its power, were inevitably lost — without its gaining the qualities of effect longed for. …. Madame Alboni has, during her career, sung the music for Ninetta, Zerlina, Amina (even!), and Rosina: and always went through the task correctly and, for a while, in tune; but the voice remained to be always a spoiled contralto; though enfeebled, heavy, and by its displacement, rendered incapable of predominating in music, as the leading voice of the quartett must do.” Alboni also sang Norma, La figlia del reggimento and Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor!

We have gramophone records of several famous mezzo-sopranos who ventured into the soprano range: Giannina Arangi Lombardi’s transformation was a complete success, whereas the results obtained by Margarethe Matzenauer and Olive Fremstad were equivocal. Three of the four contraltos featured in this album ventured higher roles from time to time: only Guerrina Fabbri seems to have remained constantly faithful to her natural register. Both Rita Fornia and Eugenia Mantelli are actually described in the encyclopedia of Kutsch & Riemens as “Sopran-Alt”.

Marianne Brandt

Born in Vienna on 12th September 1842, her real name was Marie Bischoff. Her parents, respectable but poor working people, did not want her to go on the stage and had no faith in her talents: she earned the money to pay for her singing lessons by working as a seamstress. At the age of twenty she gained a place at the Vienna Conservatory and studied with Therese Janda, Zeller and Frau Marschner. Apparently classified by her teachers as a falcon, she appeared in her final examinations as Rachel in scenes from La Juive; a thunderstorm broke out at a dramatic moment in the opera, “stirring her soul to its depth and calling forth latent dramatic powers which in turn thrilled the audience.” (Henry T. Finck, Success in Music, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909, p. 116.) And it was as Rachel that she made her debut on 4th January 1867 at Olmutz (or, according to some sources, Graz). When she sang Bellini’s Romeo her brothers, shocked to see her in male attire, repudiated her. She was engaged for Hamburg, but on her way there she sang for an unscrupulous agent in Berlin who got her a more advantageous engagement for the Royal Opera in Berlin, where she made her first appearance on 21st April 1868 as Azucena, following this with Fidès in Le prophète on the 28th April. She retained the position of First Contralto in Berlin until 1886, occasionally singing roles more ususally given to sopranos, like Meyerbeer’s Valentine and Sélika. Other Berlin roles included Amneris, Orfeo, Fidelio, Brangaene, Eglantine in Euryanthe and Margarethe in Schumann’s Genoveva, and she created Leah in Rubinstein’s Die Maccabaer on the 17th April 1875. She spent the summers of 1869 and 1870 studying with Pauline Viardot Garcia in Baden-Baden. In 1872 she sang Leonore in Fidelio and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni (with Patti and Faure) at Covent Garden, but her real triumphs in England date from 1882, when she sang Brangaene and Fidelio at Drury Lane. She sang regularly in Vienna from 1873 until 1883. She was frequently heard in Weimar, where Liszt admired her Ortrud in 1870; other roles she sang in this great musical centre were Maffio Orsini in Lucrezia Borgia, Adriano in Rienzi, Azucena and Leonora in La favorita.

Brandt became associated with Wagner, who gave her lessons in singing as well as acting! She created Waltraute in the world première of Die Gotterdammerung at the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876, and Kundry in the second performance of Parsifal on 28 July1882. According to Walter Damrosch (in My Musical Life, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926, p.140) “she sang the role only once and always remained exceedingly jealous of Madame Materna, whose rather amplitudinous charms, she insisted, had completely hypnotized Wagner.” Damrosch also explains that “Nature had not endowed her with beauty of face or figure, and she always insisted: ‘I have been a virtuous woman all my life because I am so ugly that no man would ever look at me.’” It was said that Brandt “donated her services” at Bayreuth, but then so did Nordica and, no doubt, many other singers. She sang the Walkure Brunnhilde at least once, in Stuttgart in 1883.

From 1884 to 1888 she was one of the most valued members of the German company at the Metropolitan, making her debut on 19th November, 1884, as Fidelio: “Her voice is brilliant and powerful, her method eclectic, by which we would imply that she has the vigorous enunciation and accent of the German school of song, and no little of the fluency and taste of the Italian, and as an actress she is intelligent, impassioned and forceful… Few operatic artists succeed so well in ‘filling the stage’ as this skilled songstress.” (W.J. Henderson, New York Times, quoted by W.H. Seltsam, Metropolitan Opera Annals, New York, The H.W.Wilson Company, 1947.) At the Metropolitan she appeared as Ortrud, Fidès, Maddalena, Fricka, Rossweisse, Gerhilde,Rachel, Astaroth (in Die Konigin von Saba), Magdalene in Die Meistersinger, Siébel, Adriano in Rienzi, Amneris, Brangaene, Morgana in Goldmark’s Merlin, Erda, Eglantine in Euryanthe, and even Wellgunde in Die Gotterdammerung (she was unable to sing her “creator’s role” of Waltraute because Anton Seidl cut her scene as well as the Norns’ scene!); she did not disdain to sing Donna Elvira, in those days thought of as a comprimaria role, nor Hedwig in Wilhelm Tell. On 4 March 1886 she sang Kundry in a concert performance of Parsifal. Many of these important German operas were being given their first performances in America, and in most of them Brandt shared the stage with Lilli Lehmann, a historic partnership to set beside the Marchisio sisters, Patti and Scalchi, or Sutherland and Horne. A lamentable episode cast a shadow over their artistic association. At a performance of Fidelio on January 14th 1887, just as Brandt was declaiming “Nichts, nichts, mein Florestan!”, a woman’s raucous and derisive laughter was heard from a box. It must have been shocking for the audience as well as for poor Brandt, who was convinced that the dread Lilli was responsible. They sang together for another season, though only Lilli Lehmann appeared from then on as Leonore, but on 17th March 1888 Brandt gave her farewell performance at the Metropolitan — as Leonore in Fidelio. It is not reported whether or not Lilli Lehmann was in her box….

Finck (op.cit., p. 118) remarks: “We know of no contralto on the stage who, like Fraulein Brandt, can infuse even into indifferent roles a dramatic fervor and realism that make her the creator, in part, of every opera in which she appears.” In his My Adventures in the Golden Age of Music (Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York and London, 1926, p. 213), Finck says that “Not even Schumann-Heink gave so gruesome a picture of Erda, - Erda, rising unwilling and remote, at Wotan’s command and finally swathing her head with her dun veils and sinking back into the earth’s depths, a very part and personification of them.”

Herman Klein dedicates a few pages to her in Great Women Singers of my Time, (London, George Routledge & Sons, 1931, pp 194-8): “Was she a soprano, as most Fidelios and Donna Elviras are supposed to be? Was she the contralto that was her official designation at the Hofoper in Berlin? Or was she the mezzo-soprano subsequently identified with the greatest Brangaenes and Kundrys of her day? Well, the truth is that she could be all three in turn. Her voice had an abnormal range of qualities as well as of compass and power. She had the low notes of a contralto, the high notes of a soprano, and the rich, full medium of a mezzo-soprano. But since, strictly speaking, a female singer can be classified under only one of these heads, I venture to say that Marianne Brandt was a mezzo-soprano and nothing else.” According to Klein, Pauline Viardot had said to her: “I was myself capable of singing any role but those written for a light soprano. You, with your astonishing compass, have the same gift. Sing any music you like, so long as you do not have to tire or force your voice.”

In 1890 Brandt retired and taught singing in Vienna. Like many other artists she suffered great privations during the First World War but proudly refused offers of money from her old admirers in America — however, it is gratifying to learn that she deigned to accept food parcels! She died on the 9th July 1921.

The Brandt recordings

On the 11th September 1905 Brandt recorded three cylinders, also issued pantographed onto disc records, for “Artistikal Rekord” in Vienna. Though these were marketed by Pathé, very few copies have survived. We are grateful to be able to hear the most illustrious pupil of Pauline Viardot Garcia, who has preserved her voice and technique so well that there are only occasional signs of old age: although she had been retired for fifteen years, teaching had obviously kept her voice in trim.

The most important recording is, of course, “Ah, mon fils”, one of the great arias that Meyerbeer composed in Le Prophète especially for the voice of her teacher, Viardot. These are two-minute cylinder recordings, so the aria is not complete. As Michael Scott pointed out in The Record of Singing, Vol.I, p.190, Brandt’s technique has little in common with Schumann-Heink and other German contraltos of the early twentieth century, and owes more to the Italian tradition: for example, at the end of the aria she is able to float a soft F sharp, top line, adding a little crescendo and a grand downward portamento to the B natural below the stave, with none of the ventriloqual effect of the great Ernestine in such feats. Her tone is dark, free and steady without any “fixed” sound; a slight tremolo due to old age is noticeable only in her two faster numbers. Her legato line is scrupulously observed and in such a slow, stately piece her voice floats admirably on the breath: her opening statement “Ach, mein Sohn, Segen dir!” is magnificent, suggesting something of the dramatic power of her prime. She is thrilling in the ascent to high A sharp, in which her voice rings out freely. Although the primitive recording does not tell us much about the beauty of her tone, it cannot disguise the finished technique, the grand and musical use of portamento and the inspired interpretation. There are a surprising number of fine recordings of this difficult aria, but Brandt’s is in a class apart in its artistic distinction. She honours the memory of her great teacher, and does not sound sixty-three years old.

In one stanza of the “Trinklied” from Lucrezia Borgia there are remnants of the agility that surprised the audiences at the Metropolitan Sunday Evening Concerts, especially the brilliantly articulated trill on E, fourth space. This is an awkward piece to sing well even for a young singer, and the relative weakness of the lower middle register is more apparent here as Brandt endeavours to stress the rhythm and get into a party mood. The support of the voice and its perfect placing in the wide intervals of the teasing triplet cadenza are, however, worth hearing and studying.

I had hoped that her record of Schumann’s “Fruhlingsnacht” would provide interesting evidence about performing practice in Lieder about 1870, but the song itself is too short and too fast to give much leeway to the interpreter. I wonder why she chose it: we have already observed that she is happier in slow and stately pieces. However, we notice the impulsive rhythmic thrust of her singing, her lovely pronunciation of the text without any exaggeration and without any hint of the glottal stop, the elegant and discreet use of portamento, and the equally subtle introduction of ritardando, always slightly ahead of the indication for it in the score. She supports the voice well in her triumphant rise to the climax of the song, which comes half-way through on the words “mit dem Mondesglanz herein”, and no doubt in the flesh her bright and full tone would indeed have suggested radiant moonlight.

Guerrina Fabbri

This authentic contralto was born in Ferrara on the 21st June 1866 (and christened Eguerrina) and died in Turin on 21 February 1946. She studied with A. Mattioli in Ferrara from 1881 to 1883, then underwent further studies with the great but unconventional Isabella Galletti Gianoli (another of those who wavered between soprano and mezzo-soprano roles). She made a first concert appearance in Ferrara on the 28th September 1882. On the 3rd October 1885 she made her stage debut in Viadana as Maffio Orsini in Lucrezia Borgia, followed on the 18th November by la Cieca in La Gioconda at the Teatro Dal Verme, Milan, conducted by Franco Faccio. On the 6th and 8th December she sang the contralto part in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for the Società del Quartetto at the Conservatorio, Milan and later that year sang in La Gioconda and Mefistofele at the Teatro Politeama, Palermo.

She soon became popular in Madrid, where she made her debut at the Teatro Real on the 3rd October 1886 as La Cieca in La Gioconda (of which she sang thirteen performances), followed by one Amneris with Tamagno and Battistini, after which she sang Siebel in Faust with Clementine De Vere, Gayarre and Battistini, Federico in Mignon with Pasqua, De Vere and De Lucia, Marta and Pantalis in Mefistofele, in which De Lucia alternated with Oxilia, Pierotto in Linda di Chamonix with De Vere, Battistini and either Oxilia or De Lucia, the goatherd in Dinorah with De Lucia and Battistini, Lady Pamela in Fra Diavolo with De Lucia, and Federica in Luisa Miller with Oxilia and Battistini — a grand total of sixty-one performances! She returned to Madrid in October 1887 for further performances of La Gioconda with Eva Tetrazzini, Pasqua and either Signoretti or De Lucia, Climene in Pacini’s Saffo with Eva Tetrazzini, Ulrica in Un ballo in maschera with Signoretti and Blanchart, Mefistofele, Crispino e la Comare with Patti, Blanchart, Baldelli and Silvestri, Linda di Chamonix with Patti and De Lucia, Maddalena in Rigoletto with Patti, and Stephano in Roméo et Juliette with Eva Tetrazzini and Stagno. On the 4th November 1887 she appeared with Eva Tetrazzini, Clementine De Vere, Signoretti, De Lucia, Ramon Blanchart, Alessandro Silvestri, Giuseppina Gargano and Francisco Uetam in a gala Mozart concert at the Teatro Real to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of Don Giovanni, singing in the “Dies Irae” from the Requiem. In her third Madrid season, 1888-9, she appeared again in La Gioconda but this time as Laura, with either Teodorini or Medea Borelli in the title role and De Lucia or Giannini as her Enzo; other new operas in her repertoire were Lakmé with either Emma Nevada or Van Zandt, Preziosilla in La forza del destino, Arsace in Semiramide with Borelli and De Lucia, and Petrella’s I promessi sposi with De Lucia. She repeated her old roles in Mignon with De Lucia, Mefistofele with Borelli and Valero, Dinorah with Van Zandt and De Lucia. She also created the role of Zulima in Los amantes de Teruel (Breton) with Fernando Valero and Delfino Menotti, conducted by the composer, on the 12th February 1889 (there were seven performances). She next sang in Madrid in the 1892-3 season, when she appeared in four performances of Orfeo, six of La forza del destino with Tamagno and Delfino Menotti and one of Breton’s new opera Garin with Eva Tetrazzini and Emilio De Marchi. She went to Buenos Aires for the first time in 1888, returning in 1889 when she appeared at the Politeama Argentino with Patti and De Lucia. During a lengthy partnership she sang with Patti in Semiramide, Linda di Chamonix, Crispino e la Comare, Rigoletto, Lakmé, Dinorah, Roméo et Juliette and Marta, in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Chicago, Mexico City, San Francisco, Louisville, Boston and New York. During the great Tamagno-Patti tour organized by Henry E. Abbey in 1889-90, visiting the principal towns of the U.S.A. as well as Mexico City, Fabbri sang with Tamagno in Il trovatore and Gli Ugonotti: the great tenor had insisted on her engagement as he believed only she could do full justice to the role of Azucena.

On the 3rd September 1890 she sang La Cenerentola at the Teatro Nazionale, Rome (with further performances in 1894), following this with L’Italiana in Algeri; on 16th November she sang Orfeo at the Teatro Costanzi, Rome, conducted by Leopoldo Mugnone. Beginning on the 3rd January 1891 she sang 23 performances as Lola in Cavalleria rusticana at La Scala, Milan, where she also took over the role of Zuleida in Condor by Gomes from Erinna Borlinetto, after which she appeared in L’Italiana in Algeri and La Cenerentola at the Dal Verme, Milan, and the Teatro Carignano, Turin, with four performances of La Cenerentola at La Fenice, Venezia in July 1891. As late as January 1911 she would return to La Fenice for six performances of L’Italiana in Algeri (plus a double bill of two acts of the opera with La leggenda del lago by Vittore Veneziani).

In 1893 she sang both Pierotto in Linda di Chamonix and Romeo in I Capuleti ed i Montecchi at the Liceu, Barcelona. She repeated these three roles at the Sao Carlos, Lisbon in 1895, also appearing as Maffio Orsini, Cenerentola, Isabella and Amneris. She was heard in Orfeo at the Teatro Comunale, Bologna, in 1898 and at the Teatro Lirico, Milan, in 1899. She was heard in South America again in 1893, 1894 and 1895. On the 11th June 1895 she and her sister lost all their possessions and almost lost their lives in a great fire that destroyed the neighbourhood where they were living in Santiago del Chile. She returned to the Costanzi as Ortruda in Lohengrin in 1893, and in 1911 to sing both Edwige in Guglielmo Tell with Battistini, and Mistress Quickly. In June 1897 she sang in Il barbiere di Siviglia and La Cenerentola at the San Carlo, Naples, with Pini-Corsi as her Figaro and Dandini, and repeated Rosina at the Teatro Verdi, Florence in 1901. Her last Rossinian performances seem to have been as Isabella in L’Italiana at the Politeama, Piacenza in 1912.

She had two big chances in London: in 1887 she sang Amneris on the opening night of Augustus Harris’s Drury Lane season but here she was overshadowed by Jean de Reszke, making his first London appearance as a tenor. In 1891 she was well received in a revival of La Cenerentola during Lago’s Italian Opera season at the Shaftesbury Theatre, where she also sang Orfeo and Fidalma in Il matrimonio segreto. She had more lasting success in Russia: in 1899 she sang in Ruslan and Ludmilla (in Italian) and Dargomyshky’s Rusalka (in Russian) at St. Petersburg as well as her more usual roles (including Carmen!), and in the 1900-1 season she sang both in St. Petersburg and Moscow with Battistini in Il trovatore, La Gioconda, La forza del destino and Hamlet, and as Ortrud with Constantino as Lohengrin. In December 1903 she sang four performances as Amneris in Aida at the Liceu, Barcelona with Francisco Vinas. In 1905 she sang Amneris and Azucena and, with Luisa Tetrazzini, in Dinorah at the Teatro Arbeu in Mexico City; in 1908 she appeared in the opening season of the new Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires, as Queen Gertrude in Hamlet, Madame de la Haltière in Cendrillon, la Cieca and Erda in Sigfrido.

As early as 1898 she began to sing more character roles, partly to enlarge her repertoire, partly because of her stoutness, and partly, probably, because of the increasing wear on her voice. (As record collectors are well aware, there was no shortage of younger, first-rate mezzo-sopranos and even a few contraltos of the Italian school around 1900.) This did not prevent her from enjoying a late burst of prominence when in 1909-10 she sang some performances of Azucena and La Cieca with Celestina Boninsegna in the first season of the Boston Opera Company. She sang Marcellina in the first Italian performances of Bruneau’s L’Attaque du moulin at the Teatro Lirico, Milan (8th January 1898, a flop) and Madame de la Haltière in the Italian première of Massenet’s Cendrillon at the same theatre on the 28th December 1899 (a success), which was repeated at the Teatro Adriano, Rome in 1900, the Politeama di Genova in 1901 and at the San Carlo, Naples in 1902. She finally took up Mistress Quickly at the Teatro Verdi, Trieste in January 1903, at La Scala in 1906 and 1913, at the Costanzi in 1911, and at the Verdi centenary performances in Busseto in 1913. She created the role of Margarita in Wolf-Ferrari’s I Quattro rusteghi at La Fenice, Venice in June 1914 (with her old colleague Antonio Pini Corsi in the cast, together with Giulia Tess, Ebe Boccolini and Guido Ciccolini) and repeated this part in a successful tour of many different theatres, including further performances at La Fenice in June 1923 and January 1926, at the Teatro Comunale, Bologna and the Teatro Regio, Parma in April 1921, the Teatro Donizetti, Bergamo in 1921, at La Scala in 1922, 1923 and 1925, at the Costanzi, Rome in 1923 and 1925, at the Teatro Carlo Felice, Genoa (1925), and at the San Carlo, Naples for nine performances in the 1926-27 season and a further six in 1927-28: these were her very last appearances. After a career of forty years she may well have been ready for a rest.

Fabbri also sang in other world premières: Cimbellino by Nicola Van Westerhout (Teatro Argentina, Rome, 7th April 1892); Madre by F. Deliliers (Politeama Margherita, Cagliari, 1900); the oratorio Maria al Golgota by A. Sanzogno (Teatro Verdi, Florence, 4th April 1903). On the 6th October 1906 at the Teatro Lirico, Milan, she sang Hanninda in the first Italian performance of Aben by F. José Lopez, encoring her aria. She also created the tenor role of Taddie in Mascagni’s Guglielmo Ratcliff at La Scala, Milan on the 16th February 1895.

On the 26th, 28th and 30th May 1898 Fabbri, together with Teresa Alasia, Fausta Labia and Maria Pozzi, took part in the first performances in Italy of Verdi’s Sacred Pieces, the Stabat Mater, Laudi alla Vergine and Te Deum, with the Municipal Orchestra of Turin, conducted by Toscanini, in the concert hall in the Turin International Exhibition.

Her sister Vittorina was also a professional contralto whose career lasted from 1889 to 1895.

Acknowledgments:

Most of the information in this article is taken either from Vol. IV of the Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo or from the entry by Paola Campi in Vol. 43 of the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (1993, pp. 634-636).

The Fabbri records

When casting the first performances of Otello, Verdi thought of giving the role of Quickly to Fabbri, and sent Boito to hear her in La Cenerentola. Boito seems to have been impressed only up to a point: “A voice of extended range, in tune, capable of plenty of volume without forcing, and in the medium notes beautiful enough to recall Alboni’s. She is a decent enough comic actress and vivacious when necessary; her musical phrasing is decent, her pronunciation of the words decent. This singer should not be judged in La Cenerentola because she seems ignorant, completely ignorant, of the Rossini style.” And so the role of Quickly went to Giuseppina Pasqua.

Fabbri made her eight very rare and highly sought-after records fifteen years after Boito went to test her powers; they tend to confirm his judgment. In 1887 she would certainly have been possessed of more freshness of tone: in 1903 she had still not learned anything much about Rossini style. Her voice is obviously of imposing volume and of more or less equal weight throughout a scale extending from F below the stave to the high A (a shriek at the end of “Una voce poco fa”). There is a marked break between the chest and medium registers which the singer certainly does nothing to disguise; on the contrary, she revels in a Butt-like booming on F, first space, heedless of the ensuing weakness of her G. Although she was still singing Amneris in the theatre, we wonder how she got through it, because the notes above the stave do not come easily to her: there is no hint of a properly developed head register. She transposes Fidès’s air “Ah, mon fils” a semitone down to avoid the high A sharp, but the A natural is not a good note. She tries for a grandiloquent and monumental style, which is sometimes impressive; however, in her search for vigorous declamation she slips too easily and too often into a coarse and vulgar manner.

She does have enough good points to reward the attentive listener. To begin with, she is a true contralto. To modern listeners who have never heard records of Butt, Braslau or Schumann-Heink she may at first sound more like a baritone. She had, twenty years earlier, learned to sing correctly, so her vocal emission has the round and smooth quality typical of the greatest Italian singers: her voice is never throaty, breathy or hoarse. In contrast, most modern mezzo-soprano Rossini specialists have a more guttural emission. As Boito noted, the middle range of her voice is often quite lovely, as in parts of the aria from Il profeta and especially, perhaps, in Arsace’s cavatina from Semiramide, in which, I like to imagine, the memory of her days of singing bel canto duets with Patti comes back to restore some grace to her style. All too often she pushes the voice relentlessly until it becomes unsteady, lacking the proper breath support. Although she is sometimes too brash when interpreting a male character, here she sings “Ah! quel giorno ognor rammento” with a good legato line and a great deal of tenderness, especially at “Io sentia contro il mio core”, which in the score is marked dolce. She then makes a contrasting effect with the energy and abandon of the cabaletta. She is fairly accurate, though sometimes bumpy, in her execution of the florid passages, but at least she never aspirates the intervals and tries her best to sing the runs legato and with correct support. In her record of Isabella’s “Pensa alla patria” she delivers the opening statement with notable force and grandeur, though here, as elsewhere, her tone frequently has too much of that “howling” quality beloved of some verismo singers, and she provides none of the contrasts that make her Semiramide record effective. “Una voce poco fa” does not bring before our eyes a particularly witty or sparkling Rosina and there are no interesting variations to compensate for much robust but charmless singing.

In her Rossini recordings she scrupulously inserts all the appoggiaturas, but her ornaments tend to be few and uninteresting and her cadenzas are poor (except for the rather grand one at the end of the andantino section of “Ah! quel giorno”); unfortunately the many examples of cadenzas left by Rossini himself would not have been available to her. In her record of the first stanza of Vaccaj’s great aria “Ah! se tu dormi” she inserts a few of Malibran’s embellishments, though she completely misses the rapt, dreamy effect appropriate to the scene.

Her second, twelve-inch record of “Se Romeo t’uccise un figlio” is better than the first, perhaps because she was feeling more at home in the “studio” (presumably the usual bedroom in the Grand Hotel, Milan). She transposes the aria a tone down, which is perfectly admissible as Giuditta Grisi, for whom Bellini wrote the part, seems to have possessed the kind of mezzo-soprano voice that is capable of descending into the contralto realms of the chest register and also of ascending into soprano territory, presumably by correct development of the head voice. Fabbri demonstrates some grand portamento in this second take, and the descent to low F is impressive, but in both versions her climb up the scale at the climax of the aria is marred by forced and unsteady notes. In the Brindisi from Lucrezia Borgia her singing is heavy, gaiety not being her strong point, and again there is little in the way of coloratura display, which is what we expect in this showpiece. This record contains her only attempt at a trill, on the E, fourth space, a very clumsy affair. In these obviously unrehearsed studio recordings Fabbri is not always together with the inept pianist, and in one or two places comes in wrongly or misses a beat, but it cannot have been easy to sing accompanied by Maestro Cottone.

The records of Fabbri were once thought to be the only ones made by a great coloratura contralto (v. Rodolfo Celletti, Le Grandi Voci, 1964, p.261) but then along came Marilyn Horne to treat us to much more polished vocalization. Eugenia Mantelli, unsung by Italian Encyclopaedias, was a far greater artist without possessing the “Tamagno tones” of Fabbri.

Acknowledgments:

Apart from the books quoted in my text, I have also consulted the biographical notes on Brandt and Fabbri published by Lim Lai in The Record Collector, Vol.28 Nos 5 & 6 (1983).

Eugenia Mantelli

The re-publication, after a hundred years, of the complete recordings of Eugenia Mantelli is an important event. It would be safe to assume that no collector has ever amassed a complete collection of these rare documents of great singing, even though they were made in New York and marketed by Victor on their cheap label, Zonophone: now, at last, we can hear all her legacy.

Her career developed in a peculiar manner, and to plot the course of her appearances one has to consult chronologies of widely scattered theatres. All that I know of her comes mainly from Kutsch & Riemens, from an article by Albert Wolf in The Record Collector, Vol 4 N° 4, from the liner notes by Max De Schauensee written almost half a century ago for the Club-99 LP dedicated to Mantelli (CL 99-79), and from a letter from Keith Moyer in the “Notes and Queries” section of The Record Collector, Vol.15 Nos. 5 & 6.

She would appear to have been born in Florence in or around 1860 and her parents are said to have both been vocal teachers. She obtained a diploma from the Conservatory of Milan in 1877. (It would be nice to know if she studied with Maestro Leoni, teacher of Olimpia Boronat, and one of the very few teachers praised by Verdi.) She made her debut at the Sao Carlos, Lisbon, on the 20th November 1883 as Urbano in Gli Ugonotti. She then toured with the Spanish tenor Julian Gayarre in Germany, Italy and Brazil.

In November 1887 she sang Adalgisa to the Norma of Maria Osta at the Teatro Costanzi, Rome, then she went to the San Carlo, Naples, for a series of performances of Eboli in Don Carlo with Adalgisa Gabbi, José Oxilia, Giuseppe Kaschmann and Auguste Boudouresque. In 1889 she joined Toresella, Teodorini, Masini and Battistini in the company that inaugurated the Teatro de la Opera in Buenos Aires, giving further performances at the Teatro Solis, Montevideo: Mantelli sang with Battistini in La favorita, Amleto, La forza del destino and Gli Ugonotti.

It may have been at about this time that Mantelli married and retired for a while from the stage (or was this between 1877 and 1883?). Mr De Schauensee tells us that her husband became an invalid and she was obliged to resume her career. She sang at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow in March 1894 in Faust and Rigoletto with Battistini, and as Fidès in Il profeta with Tamagno - according to Mr Wolf in Kharkhoff as well as Moscow. Also in 1894 she sang Brunnhilde in La Valchiria in Trieste, with Emilia Corsi as Siglinda.

She then went to the Metropolitan (“because the contracts were lucrative”) where she made her debut on the 23rd November 1894 as Amneris, with Tamagno, Libia Drog, Maurizio Bensaude and Edouard de Reszke in the cast. The feared critic W.J.Henderson praised her with reservations in a review that I shall return to below. She remained in the company until the end of the 1899-1900 season. Her career at the Metropolitan is documented in detail in William H. Seltsam’s Metropolitan Opera Annals, (New York, The H.W. Wilson Company, 1947), and in Annals of the Metropolitan Opera published by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, Inc., in 1989, Editor in Chief Gerald Fitzgerald. Details of her performances on tour with the Metropolitan company will be found in Quaintance Eaton’s Opera Caravan, Adventures of the Metropolitan on Tour ( New York, Metropolitan Opera Guild, 1957).

Apparently intent on working hard and gratifying the management, from the very beginning she alternated “star” mezzo-soprano roles with less glamorous parts such as Emilia in Otello (with Eames, Tamagno and Maurel) and Lola in Cavalleria rusticana (with Tamagno). She reaped her reward when Henderson , reviewing Otello in the New York Times, purred:
“The role of Emilia was in the competent hands of Mme. Mantelli. It is not a great part, but its correct performance is necessary to the general effectiveness of the opera. It is fortunate, therefore, that so trustworthy a contralto is in the company.” (December 4th, 1894.)

She also sang with Tamagno in Il trovatore, Il profeta and again in Aida with Nordica, as well as in the first Met. performances of Samson et Dalila, apparently in French (though everyone in the cast, except Plançon, was Italian). Henderson noted that:
“Mme. Mantelli did not impart sufficient mellowness nor warmth to either the Spring song or the ‘Mon coeur’, though it must be said that she sang both numbers with smoothness and good phrasing.” (New York Times, 9th February 1895.)

She sang Ortruda in an Italian Lohengrin with Nordica (alternating with Melba) and Jean and Edouard de Reszke. Of her first appearance in the role Henderson reports:
“Mme. Mantelli’s Ortrud was excellent in its vigour and its vocal generosity, albeit there was something too much of effort in her delivery at times. She imparted a great deal of dramatic force to her work, however, and in the duo with Telramund in the second act did her work admirably.” (New York Times, 6th December 1894.) Of her second performance Henderson goes so far as to say “Mme. Mantelli was the Ortrud, and it is safe to say that the habitués of the Opera House have not heard a better one.” (Times, 15 December 1894.)

Mantelli went on to sing Siébel in Faust with Eames and the de Reszkes, Maddalena in Rigoletto with Melba, Queen Guinevere in Bemberg’s Elaine with Melba, the de Reszkes and Plançon, and was a protagonist of the “Nights of the seven stars” when she appeared with Nordica, Melba, Jean and Edouard de Reszke, Ancona and Plançon in Les Huguenots (earlier performances in the same season had featured Scalchi and Maurel instead of Mantelli and Ancona as Urbain and De Nevers). One wonders why she did not take part in the gala performance that ended the season on the 30th April, 1895: she ought to have been available, as she sang Ortrud on the 24th.

In 1895-6 she repeated Ortrud, Lola, Azucena, Amneris, Urbain and with Emma Calvé sang Queen Gertrude in Hamlet and the minor roles of Marta and Pantalis in Mefistofele. Rather unexpectedly, for the opera was out of fashion, she and Ancona were allowed to revive La favorita, which was repeated the following season. It was on this occasion that W.J. Henderson pronounced, in the New York Times, the waspish judgment that puzzles us still: “Mme. Mantelli was a most satisfactory Leonora. She was in fine voice and she sang, except for her great tremolo, with taste and judgment throughout the opera. Her ‘O mio Fernando’ aroused great enthusiasm on the part of the ‘bravo’ army.” (New York Times, 30th November 1895.) The revival was successful enough for Mantelli, Cremonini and Plançon to be invited to sing Act 4 as part of a Testimonial gala for Abbey and Grau on the 24th April, 1896.

Mantelli sang Siébel on the opening night of the 1896-7 season with Melba and the de Reszkes; to her usual roles of Urbain, Amneris, Azucena, Ortrud, Maddalena, Marta & Pantalis, she added Nancy in Flotow’s Marta. There was no season in 1897-8, but Mantelli returned in 1898-9 to sing Nancy, Azucena, Siébel, Leonora in La favorita, Amneris, Urbain and Maddalena: her new roles were Siegrune in Die Walkure and the Prologo in Mancinelli’s Ero e Leandro. This year she got to sing in the closing night of the season, a concert on the 26th March 1899, to which her contribution was an aria from Pacini’s Saffo, presumably “Ah! con lui mi fu rapita” (the sort of piece that she might have learned at the Conservatorio).

In 1899-1900 Mantelli repeated Siébel, Azucena, Amneris, Lola, Urbain and Maddalena, and added Stéphano in Roméo et Juliette (with Eames, Adams and Sembrich alternating as Juliette) and the Second Lady in the all-star revival of Il flauto magico (greedy diva-worshippers got to hear Sembrich, Eames, Adams, Ternina, de Lussan, De Cisneros, Mantelli, and Olitzka all in one opera, with Campanari, Pini-Corsi, Dufriche and Plançon thrown in). Apparently feeling herself threatened by the arrival on the scene of such contraltos and mezzos as Schumann-Heink, Louise Homer, Rosa Olitzka and Louise Kirkby-Lunn, Mantelli left the Metropolitan, returning for one performance of Amneris on the 27th November 1902, or rather for part of one performance: Carrie Bridewell, replacing the indisposed Louise Homer, broke down in Act II of Aida, and Mantelli, who was singing in vaudeville in New York that season, was rushed in to finish the evening. Whilst in the company she had appeared in a great many concerts, singing several times in Rossini’s Stabat Mater with Plançon and offering some interesting arias: not only “O don fatale”, “Una voce poco fa” and the Rondò fron La Cenerentola, but also Arthur Goring Thomas’s lovely song “A summer night”. During each of her four main seasons, Mantelli also sang many of her usual roles with the Met. company on tour, in towns such as Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Baltimore, Washington, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Louisville and Cincinnati.

In March 1900 she announced to the press that she had decided not to return to the U.S.A. for the following season, as she had “made arrangements to sing for three months in Portugal at the Lisbon Opera House, and then fill an engagement at the Opera House in Seville for one month”. She declared that Grau had asked her to stay and be part of his company, but “after singing here for five consecutive seasons, she thinks a comparative rest will do her more good.” In September 1900 she was back in New York and was married to Fernando Ernest de Angelis (“better known in the musical world as Prof. Ernest Damico”) at St. Agnes’s church on East 43rd Street. (Her first husband had died in Italy three years earlier.) The happy couple planned to visit Colorado and then proceed toLisbon, where Mme.Mantelli had professional engagements. They intended to make their permanent residence in New York City.

After her New York season in 1895-6 Mantelli went to Covent Garden for the Grand Season, making her debut on the 13th May 1896 as Leonora in La favorita, with the New York cast of Cremonini, Ancona and Plançon. She also sang Ortrud, Maddalena, Nancy and Amneris, and repeated her Brunnhilde in Die Walkure, in which she must surely have sung in Italian though everyone else sang in French.

She did not lose all contact with opera in Italy during her Metropolitan years, for in 1898 she sang in Falstaff in Trieste.

In September 1902 Pietro Mascagni took a Mascagni Opera Company on tour through the United States, partly simply to exploit the money-making potential of his name and partly to fill in time during one of his many psychological crises. The idea was to perform Cavalleria rusticana, Iris, Zanetto, Guglielmo Ratcliff and a supporting programme of arias and scenes. The singers included Amelia Pinto, Elena Bianchini Cappelli, Maria Farneti, Piero Schiavazzi, Antonio Paoli, Virgilio Bellatti and Francesco Campagna, all fairly young but highly promising artists; the “veterans” of the company were Eugenia Mantelli and Francesco Navarini. Although some artistic success is to be recorded, terrible financial disasters overwhelmed poor Mascagni, who was arrested for debt to the delight of Italian caricaturists, who depicted the composer in chains. The ill-starred season opened at the Metropolitan Opera House on the 8th October, 1902 with Zanetto and Cavalleria, with Bianchini Cappelli and Mantelli appearing in both operas. Henderson was, on the whole, favourable to the enterprise:
“The two singers had that combination of technic and temperament which is almost the birthright…..Our old familiar friend Mme. Mantelli was the Zanetto, and surprised her most accustomed hearers by the spirit and vigor of her singing and acting.” (New York Times, 9th October 1902.)

The operas were repeated the following day and subsequent performances of Cavalleria with Mantelli in the cast were given in Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Baltimore, and Cleveland; Zanetto appears to have been given only in Baltimore and Cleveland. (Guglielmo Ratcliff was never performed on this tour, though it was rehearsed.) I have been unable to discover if Mantelli sang in the Grand Sunday Night Concert at the Metropolitan on the 19th October (in which Amelia Pinto, who loathed Mascagni, offered her warhorse — the aria from Ero e Leandro by Bottesini!).

From Mr Moyer we learn that “After her retirement from the Metropolitan Opera, New York, she appeared in music halls there, then went to Lisbon, where she was promised a season in opera. The deal fell through, and she sang only two matinée performances of [Dalila] (her favourite role) and Carmen.
“Her private life after this became most unhappy. It seems that her second husband, Fernando D’Angelis, from whom she must have separated, lived in New York, and after a time ceased writing to her. She had two sons, one a mental case and the other, her favorite, died. She lost all interest in life and retired from singing. Eventually she took up teaching, and so numerous were her pupils that she was obliged to give evening classes. She taught up to the time of her death, which was caused by a liver ailment. She was buried in Lisbon, and a mausoleum was erected for her, through the contributions of her hundreds of pupils.”

In 1905 she toured America with her “Mantelli Operatic Company”giving opera in English, offering scenes and whole acts from Carmen and Faust and a complete Trovatore (at least, this is what she offered Denver, Colorado on the 9th, 10th and 11th of February 1905). In 1906, having renamed her outfit the “Mantelli English Grand Opera Company” she toured again, appearing in Il trovatore, La favorita and Faust. She does not seem to have spared herself: for example, on the 15th April 1906 Denver was offered a matinée of scenes from Faust and La favorita, with a complete Trovatore in the evening. Performances were given daily until the 21st.

Mantelli opened the 1906-7 Carnevale season at the Teatro Sociale, Mantua, (no precise dates available but presumably beginning in December 1906) with thirteen performances of Sansone e Dalila with Nicola Zerola, Dante Coli, Umberto Cocchi and Guido Stefani, conducted by Gino Marinuzzi. She returned to Mantua in the 1907-8 season for ten performances as Erodiade in the opera Il Battista by the Turin-born cleric Don Giocondo Fino (born 1867), who conducted the first performance, with Alice Magdala, Eugenio Folco, Giuseppe Kaschmann and Giulio Cirino. The first performances of this opera had been given at the Teatro Vittorio Emanuele, Turin in November 1906, with further performances in Rome, Florence, and Amsterdam; it is possible that Mantelli took part in at least some of these. She certainly repeated the role when the opera was produced at the San Carlo, Naples, for four performances in March 1909, with Emma Druetti and Carolina White alternating as Salomè, Kaschmann as John the Baptist and Oreste Luppi as Herod.

Other late appearances of hers that we have traced are six of Queen Gertrude in Amleto with Maria Galvany and Giuseppe Kaschmann at La Fenice, Venice, in January 1908, and the same role to the Hamlet of Titta Ruffo and the Ophelia of Esperanza Clasenti at the Sao Carlos, Lisbon later the same month. She is reported to have sung Carmen at the Politeama Genovese in 1908.

Mr Wolf states that she also appeared in Luisa Miller, Le roi de Lahore, Linda di Chamonix, Dinorah, Un ballo in maschera and Mignon.

She died on the 3rd March, 1926.

The Mantelli records

So, when these supremely lovely records were made, Eugenia Mantelli was singing in vaudeville in New York and touring lesser cities with opera in English. Though she cannot have been in her prime, one critic wrote:”Was it by contrast with present surroundings that her mezzo voice sounded clearer, truer than ever in the Grau days?”

It is interesting to compare Mantelli with Fabbri who, though probably only six years younger, sings in a far more “modern” style. It is surely Mantelli who would have made the ideal duet partner for Patti — what a pity that they seem never to have sung together! Mantelli is a perfect exemplar of a voice well-trained in the old Italian school; her records might be considered a pendant to Patti’s as master-classes in bel canto singing. At about forty-five years of age Mantelli’s voice has been reduced in range, her noble efforts to follow the fashion of her day and attempt Ortrud and Brunnhilde having probably contributed to attenuating her highest notes. Although she reaches the high B natural easily in head register in the long runs of “Nacqui all’affanno”, she could not have sustained this note in full voice at the end of “Non più mesta” (not that Rossini would have asked her to). She can sustain a good high A natural (for example, in the duet from Mignon) but B flat and B natural are only available when taken en passant in head voice. At the other end of the scale she can sing a full and powerful B flat below the stave but does not venture lower than A. The emission of the voice may be described as perfectly natural and apparently spontaneous: it is free of the throat in all three registers, and the registers are well blended. The tone is warm, limpid and velvety, round and fresh, and truly “forward”; the primitive but frequently close recordings enable us to hear the clear, bell-like brilliance of her attack. This constantly forward, steady and rounded production of the voice is only possible with the old Italian method of breathing preached by Garcia and Lablache in their Methods, and is the basis for Mantelli’s impeccable legato. She has equalized her vowels, and can declaim easily in the upper medium register, modifying the vowels whilst retaining clear diction. She is a mistress of the use of the chest register: on the passage notes, around E first line, she can either blend the chest voice imperceptibly with the medium or swell it out to a thrilling, contralto forte according to the requirements of the music.

There are almost no signs of decay, mis-use, wear, incipient old age or any other vocal problems. However, after listening to a certain number of her records the attentive armchair critic becomes aware that she is saving her strength in the upper medium and higher range of the voice; she sings lightly whenever she can, using head register as much as possible above D, fourth line, but as all her singing is firmly supported this “safety first” practice is far from obtrusive. When she does need to summon a forte on the upper F or G (as at the climax of “Stride la vampa”, for example) the full, loud mixed tones are available. Her voice always floats on the breath. When compared with Patti (or even with Rita Fornia) we notice, however, that on records, at least, she does not offer much variation in dynamics or tone colour.

Her mastery of coloratura is such that we may point to her Rossini records (alas, only four sides) as probably the only records ever made by a contralto or mezzo soprano in which the florid music is executed with absolute precision combined with perfectly produced and beautiful tone in the style of Rossini’s own singers. She is an artistic descendant of Colbran, a wonderful example of a perfectly trained singer with a personal musical style anchored in the traditions of the eighteen-eighties. We cannot doubt that, had it been possible for her to sing Rosina, Isabella or Cenerentola at the Met, she would have been recognized as an extraordinary artist even among the great ones of her day. As it is, she garnered excellent reviews as Amneris, Ortrud and Leonora, but other singers would come along to sing these roles brilliantly and gradually efface her memory.

And what of her “great tremolo”, castigated by Henderson in his review of La favorita? There is not a single wobbly note in all her recorded output, nor does she ever manifest the kind of intrusive vibrato that many people object to in Supervia’s records (for example). Thanks to the assistance of Mr Robert Tuggle, I think I have found the answer to this conundrum in another Henderson review, the one following her debut at the Met. He says:
“Mme. Eugenia Mantelli, who made her début as Amneris, proved to have a substantial contralto voice of fine quality. She forced it at times, and then it went sharp and tremulous; but when she permitted it to flow naturally it was tolerably free from tremulo and pleasant to hear. She will probably be a useful member of the company.” (New York Times, 24 November 1894.)

I suspect that what happened to Mantelli was what also happened to Caruso, Tetrazzini, Lauri-Volpi and probably many other singers when they discovered that New York audiences, spoiled by constantly hearing the very best singers (like Patti and the de Reszkes), did not like the cruder, more unrefined aspects of opera singing such as forcing, wobbling, unremittent yelling or excessive recourse to the voix blanche. Caruso listened to Plançon in order to emulate his sonorous legato singing “like a ‘cello”: Mantelli must in some way or another have polished her technique and style during her stay in New York. The “great tremolo” is not in evidence on her records because she had long before stopped forcing her voice.

Mantelli’s most important recording is the Rondò Finale from La Cenerentola, “complete” on two sides and among her last efforts before the recording horn. The voice is most beautifully recorded, allowing us to appreciate the lovely quality of the timbre, with all the bloom of a ripe peach, even on the lower medium notes (from E, first line to about B third line): throughout the entire range, from the A below the stave to the B natural above, the voice is supported on the breath with admirable solidity. Some things are simplified - for example, she omits the short trills on “soffrì tacendo” and elsewhere, and in the descending scales in the coda she resorts to a simple variation to avoid having to reach the low G sharp - but everything that she does sing is executed with a perfection that we shall not find in any other recording of this music. What a lesson she gives us in the properly defined execution of the runs, every note distinct without any hint of intrusive aspirates or diaphragmatic thrust: true to Garcia’s definition, her florid passages sound as though “played on the organ”. She interpolates two cadenzas, one at the end of “Nacquì all’affanno”, the other at “Tutto trovate in me”, both similar to cadenzas to be found in Rossini autographs. Her long trill is good enough to redeem her omission of the short trills. Curiously, she does not insert several essential appoggiaturas (e.g. “No, no, no, no, tergete il ciglio”) which I am sure Fabbri would have done.

If only Zonophone had allowed her two sides (or even one 12” side) for “Una voce poco fa”! (In the unusual key of E flat.) What a wonderful performance! - not without humour (though we suspect this was not her strong suit), distinguished by fluid execution and masterly rhythmic accentuation. She and Parvis seem rather put off by the ferocious cuts necessary to contain some bits of the duet “Dunque io son” on one short side, and modern musicologists will be puzzled by the fact that both singers simplify some phrases while embellishing others! However, Mantelli’s coloratura singing is again breathtaking.

At the recording session that produced the Cenerentola discs she also committed to wax another coloratura spectacular, the Polonaise “Me llaman la Primorosa” from “El Barbero de Sevilla” by Nieto & Giménez. In the zarzuela the heroine, Elena, is rehearsing the role of Rosina in Rossini’s Barbiere, and this “Polaca” is the piece she has prepared for the Lesson Scene! Mantelli sings it in G, a tone down, most brilliantly, with telling ritardando effects, exhibiting models of correct execution in runs, triplets and trills. Can we doubt that, if she ever sang Rosina in the theatre, this would have been her choice for the Lesson Scene?

In the basic contralto arias that she recorded, Mantelli gives us a useful guide to the “traditional” graces to the vocal line, as well as “correct” application of portamento di voce and tempo rubato: the arias from La favorita, Il trovatore, La Gioconda, Mignon, Faust, Lucrezia Borgia and Gli Ugonotti all repay study. In “O mio Fernando” her style is broad, her embellishments lovely, but even better is the duet “Ah, l’alto ardor” in which both she and Parvis maintain a ‘cello-like legato, each listening to the other in perfect duet-singing; he produces such a ravishing piano tone that I cannot help suspecting that he had Battistini’s record at home (listen to the “echo-effect” in the double cadenza!). In “Stride la vampa” Mantelli again omits the short trills, substituting triplets — this must have been a well-known tradition, for Tamagno does it in “Deserto sulla terra” and Melba in “Caro nome”. Her long trills are excellent. We are slightly disappointed by the Brindisi from Lucrezia Borgia but only because the second stanza is so similar to the first — could it be that she forgot her ornaments under the stress of recording? The record remains an excellent example of her fleet coloratura singing (she appears to have transposed the aria down into B). One of our few souvenirs of the “Nights of the seven stars”, Urbain’s aria “Vaga donna” from Gli Ugonotti, also shows how she combined lightness with solidity in her scales and arpeggi. Mantelli uses the Italian translation found in the Ricordi edition, whereas Jean de Reszke and Lillian Nordica, two others of the “Seven stars” whom we can just about hear on Mapleson cylinders, use the translation of Boosey’s “Royal Edition”. Despite some cuts, simplification and fiddling about with the key, the “Styrienne” from Mignon is another successful example of her individual style. Siébel’s Flower Song from Faust she sings, a tone down in B flat, with great vivacity and sweet tone, making the necessary contrasts in the middle section, and ending with a brilliant cadenza.

“Voce di donna” from La Gioconda is an important record that deserves careful listening. Maybe she allows herself rather too many breaths, but the illusion of unbroken legato is still there, due to the impeccable floating of the voice on the breath and the masterly use of upward and downward portamento, creating an unrivalled effect of warmth and grandeur. At the climax, “Su quella testa vigli” she may disappoint us, for the voice will not “open up” thrillingly on the upper G, but she compensates us by her telling rhythmic variant on the second repetition of “vigili” and by her exquisite soft attack on the upper F in the cadenza. There may be no dazzling coloratura in this record, but none the less it is one of her great achievements.

She sings Zerlina’s part in “La ci darem la mano” with considerable charm and has no problems with the tessitura, even interpolating the high A that she must have heard Sembrich sing at the Met.; Parvis is very elegant in this duet (apparently modelling his tone on Scotti’s), although he misses one of his cues. Both sing even better in the “Swallow duet” from Mignon, in which they keep their voices light and flexible despite the rather fast speed dictated by recording conditions.

I had not realized until listening to these records anew that Mantelli was such a fine linguist. I doubt whether she ever sang Carmen in French but she must have been prepared to sing the role at the Met., which she was never called upon to do. Three of her four recordings from the opera are in excellent French. Both the “Habanera” and the “Chanson bohème” (this is the side in Italian) are very reminiscent of Calvé’s records in their phrasing and their technical solidity. In the “Séguidille”, though she makes no attempt at the high B, she jumps with great élan from one section to another through the crudest cuts. The linguist is mostly in evidence in the songs: she sings with clear, pearly diction in French (“Sans toi” and “Ninon”), Spanish (“Los ojos negros”), English (“Goodbye” and the Mascagni “Ave Maria”) and German (“Der Asra” — with one mistake in the words).

In her Tosti songs her style is “old-fashioned” — her little variants are more in the manner of Battistini than Caruso or Melba. In 1900 Rubinstein’s songs were still as popular as, say, Mendelssohn’s, and “Der Asra” was an obvious choice (Selma Kurz and Giovanni Battista De Negri, to name but two, also recorded it). Heine’s short but haunting poem is set to evocative music; Mantelli sings the song splendidly, giving full rein to the chest voice, but she hardly catches the rapt and anguished effect of the mysterious young man’s answer to the questioning of the importunate princess. She is more at home in two splendid records, the “Ave Maria” and the “Leggenda valacca”. The pseudo-religious vocal version of the Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana was written in London for Emma Calvé, to cash in on the vogue currently being enjoyed by the opera ( and by this splendid tune), and was probably arranged by Mascagni himself, though he never owned up! Mantelli sings it touchingly, and gives another demonstration of how music may be ennobled by the application of elegant portamento. Braga’s “Serenata” is, I believe, the only Mantelli record for which an original stamper survives, so we may hear it in a modern vinyl pressing which brings her lovely voice into our rooms with all its velvety clarity. Although I do not care for the rather pinched tones in which she sings the mother’s lines, as the dying girl her voice soars most beautifully as she echoes the arching phrases of the violin obbligato, the “Angel’s Serenade”.

I think Mantelli recorded Lotti’s “Pur dicesti” before Patti’s famous record was published, but it is obvious that she had heard Patti sing this aria, either in London in l896 or in New York in 1903, for she adopts several of the Diva’s changes. Because of the time limitation she is obliged to sing much more quickly than Patti or Melba, but her joyous and invigorating performance is a valid interpretation in its own right, highly individual and arresting through her original use of rubato, thrilling in the clean execution of intervals and ornaments, and in the brilliance of her trill - Patti and Melba had better look out!

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Taurino Parvis

Mantelli’s duet partner, the excellent baritone Taurino Parvis, deserves a word. He was born in Turin in 1879 and died in 1957. He studied law but at his final viva voce examination he advised the commission:”You may feel quite safe in passing me, for I promise I will never be a practising lawyer!” The young Parvis had decided to make his career in the theatre, and in 1903 he sang Marcello and Scarpia at the San Carlo, Naples, his earliest traced performances. He returned to the San Carlo in 1913 for La fanciulla del West, La bohème and Il segreto di Susanna, in 1924 for La dannazione di Faust, in 1926 for Guido Laccetti’s Carnasciali, and in 1927-8 he sang Lescaut in Manon Lescaut, Amfortas in Parsifal and Ping in Turandot (with Eva Turner). He appeared at the Metropolitan in the seasons of 1904-5 and 1905-6, where he does not seem to have succeeded in making a profound impression in the face of competition from Campanari and Scotti. He made his debut on the second night of the season, 23rd November 1904, as Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor with Sembrich and Caruso, but his next appearance was as Morales in Carmen on the 25th, so it is clear that he had not been engaged as a star baritone. His other roles were Alfio, Schaunard, Silvio, the Night Watchman in Les Huguenots and Mercutio in Roméo et Juliette. He appeared in several concerts, as well as in Die Fledermaus as one of a host of extra guest stars, and as Silvio in the end-of-season gala performance of acts from various operas. On tour he substituted for Scotti after Act II of Rigoletto in San Francisco on April 6th 1905. In the 1905-6 season he covered much of the same faintly depressing ground, but did sing a performance of Germont in La traviata with Sembrich on the 23rd December. Almost at the end of his brief Met. career he found himself at San Francisco the night of the 1906 earthquake, and was observed fleeing in his underwear with a valuable violin that he had saved from destruction under his arm. He returned to the U.S.A. in later years to tour with the San Carlo Opera Company.

He sang a few performances of Marcello and Valentino in Faust at the autumn season at Covent Garden in 1906. In 1909 he sang in Andrea Chénier and in Mancinelli’s Paolo e Francesca at La Scala, where he returned in 1911 for Nicolai’s Le vispe comari di Windsor, I fuochi di San Giovanni by Richard Strauss and Humperdinck’s Figli di Re and in 1926 and 1927 for Madama Butterfly, Turandot, La bohème, Pedrollo’s Delitto e castigo and Guarino’s Madame di Challant. He first appeared at the Costanzi, Rome in 1917 (and then again in 1919) as Jack Rance, then every year from 1921 to 1926 in a wide range of parts, from Il matrimonio segreto to I cavalieri di Ekebu. His career was never that of the great charismatic star baritones, but a satisfactory one, none the less, taking him to most of the important Italian theatres (the Carlo Felice, Genoa, the Regio, Turin etc.) as well as abroad to Hungary, Russia, Spain and South America. In 1917 he sang at the Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires, in L’elisir d’amore, Siberia, Tristano e Isotta and in El sueno de alma by Lopez Buchardo, returning after the war to sing La bohème, Gianni Schicchi, La traviata and Il piccolo Marat. He first sang Falstaff at the Regio, Turin in 1926. He sang in several world premières, including Turandot, Il piccolo Marat and I cavalieri di Ekebu. In about 1929 he seems to have given up the stage and returned to being a lawyer.

His recorded copiously for Zonophone, Columbia, Pathé and Edison, and his records are generally very finely sung. The voice does not seem to be of the most luscious quality, but it is perfectly produced and his method might well be a model for any young baritone. A Pathé record of two solos from the Act Two duet of Germont (with no Violetta!) is most exquisitely sung, rivalling Battistini.

Acknowledgments:

For information about Parvis I have consulted an article (unsigned, but perhaps by Oscar Strona?) in the November 1967 issue of the magazine Discoteca (year VIII, N° 75).

Rita Fornia

The late Mr William Moran, one of those record collectors for whom nothing could be too much trouble, and to whom all lovers of fine singing and old records are forever indebted, published an article on Rita Fornia in The Record Collector, Vol. 10 Nos. 10-11. All that is known about this excellent and unusual singer is contained in that article: without it, I should only have been able to write about her career at the Metropolitan — which does, in fact, turn out to have been the focal point of her artistic life. Once she had got her Met. contract she seems not to have wanted to sing anywhere else.

The indefatigable Mr Moran wrote to several people who had known, heard or worked with Rita Fornia, and received an informative reply from Mary Watkins Cushing, authoress of a biography of Olive Fremstad. Miss Cushing states that “In the period of opera which included many of the greatest singers the Metropolitan has ever known, Madame Fornia did not stand out, although she was gifted with an excellent and useful voice, artistic stamina, and a kindly and accomodating disposition. Were she a member of the company today, she would doubtless be considered a top-flight singer. She was, during her time, an invaluable asset; the sort of hard-working, uninspired, but competent artist every company needs……She was a pleasant, fairly placid woman, of no great personal distinction either on or off the scene. She was, in short, not the material of which the so-called stars of the musical world are made, but she was beyond all doubt a first-rate example of what the Europeans call a routinière.”

In short, Fornia seems to have been the twentieth-century equivalent of Mathilde Bauermeister (1849-1926), the hardy perennial comprimaria, admired by all critics (including George Bernard Shaw), who, though a contralto, could sing any role as a last-minute replacement — even the Queen of the Night! We can hear only odd phrases from Bauermeister on the Mapleson cylinders, but with Fornia we are more fortunate. In thirteen surviving Victor records from 1910-12 we hear a singer with a beautiful voice and polished technique who sings an interesting group of arias and songs in such a way as to make the records very appealing indeed: we can well believe that if she were singing today she would be a star. She may not have stood out among her contemporaries on the Metropolitan stage, but on the phonograph she is outstanding indeed.

Like Rosa Ponselle, Rita Fornia was of immigrant stock. She was born Regina Newman in San Francisco on the 17th July 1878; her father, a successful wholesale jeweller, and her mother both hailed from Prussia (one supposes their name would originally have been Neumann). Mr Moran was able to gather a considerable amount of detail about her family background.

Regina Newman (already preferring to be called “Rita”) heard Patti in San Francisco (this must have been in 1890) and decided to be a singer. In 1898 her father allowed her to go to New York where she may have had some lessons from the famous contralto Sofia Scalchi; the bass Emil Fischer told her to go to Europe to study. In 1899 she began to study in Berlin with Selma Nicklass-Kemper, later the teacher of Frieda Hempel, who trained her voice as a high soprano. She was given a contract for the Hamburg opera and made her debut at Lubeck in 1901 as Eudoxie in La Juive; on the Hamburg circuit she also sang such roles as Rosina, Ines in L’africaine and the Queen of the Night (with what she described as “the usual transpositions”, taking her no higher than E flat). She realised that these high roles were tiring her voice and for about a year in 1902-3 she studied in Paris with Jean de Reszke, who re-trained her voice, apparently, as a mezzo-soprano without sacrificing the highest notes. Jean recommended her to H.W. Savage, and she returned to New York to make her debut with the Savage English Grand Opera Company at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on 21 September 1903, as Siébel in Faust (in English). With the Savage company between 1903-6 Miss Newman sang Azucena, Musetta, Nedda and Santuzza (sometimes both on the same evening), Elisabeth and Venus (these, too, occasionally in the same performance), and, if I interpret Mr Moran aright, Brunnhilde and Sieglinde in The Valkyrie — as well as, I suppose, several other roles. The San Francisco Chronicle of 2nd March, 1905 reviews her first performance in her home town, on which occasion she had appeared in Lohengrin: “The trying role of Ortrud was Miss Rita Newman’s debut in her native city and the long sustained scene of the second act she carried through without a strain in a contralto voice of smooth, round tone and full dramatic force. It was a performance of a high musical stamp.”

Conried engaged her for the Metropolitan’s 1907-8 season and she made her first appearance under this more glamorous régime, with her name temporarily modified into Rita La Fornia (after her native state), at the opening of the new Academy of Music in Brooklyn on 14th November 1907. She was thrown in at the deep end as Siébel in Faust, with Farrar, Caruso, Noté and Didur. Her first appearance at the Metropolitan Opera House was as the Geisha in the first performance of Iris in that theatre, with Eames, Caruso, Scotti and Journet, on the 6th December 1907. She proved her usefulness to the company when in Philadelphia, on the 31st December, she replaced an ailing Sembrich in Il barbiere di Siviglia; she sat up all night to learn Rosina in Italian, having until then only sung the opera in German. Bonci, Campanari and Chaliapin were in the cast. After some appearances as Helmwige in Die Walkure she hit the headlines when, on the 19th March 1908, she replaced Emma Eames as Leonora in Il trovatore, singing with Caruso, Homer and Stracciari. She must have been ready for this opportunity, for Eames only notified the management at five thirty in the afternoon that she would be unable to sing that night. She repeated the role on the 4th April and also on tour in Boston on the 8th April. It must have seemed like a dream come true when Rita read her reviews. The New York American reported: “To the amazement of those who had not heard the singer in important parts, Mme. La Fornia made a pronounced and brilliant hit. Though she had had no rehearsal, she sang admirably. In the dramatic passages she had power, and suggested passion. In her florid music, she had taste, charm, and remarkable facility. Her voice is fresh and of a delightful quality. She acts intelligently. And she is handsome. Why has the Metropolitan management kept a singer of Mme. La Fornia’s calibre in the background all these months?”

The New York Times was less expansive but equally encouraging: “The audience discovered early in the first act that it was necessary to make no apology for Miss La Fornia. Her voice is pleasing in quality and she sang the music brilliantly. The difficult coloratura passages in the first and last acts she managed with ease.”

Meanwhile, on the 18th February she had sung Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni in Philadelphia (with the Met company) with Farrar, Bonci, Scotti and Chaliapin, conducted by Mahler, and repeated the role in New York on the 3rd April 1908 (replacing Gadski). This was not nearly so successful an experiment. Reporting on her Met performance of Elvira the New York Press opined that “To sing for the first time so exacting a part as Elvira, exacting particularly because it is somewhat too consistently high in range for this singer’s voice, was no small ordeal. Under the circumstances Miss Fornia did well. Her voice, except when she was straining for high notes, was warm and expressive, and, allowing for the effects of excitement, well managed.”

This succès d’estime seems to have convinced Gatti-Casazza that he had better confine this useful singer to smaller parts that needed to be well sung — though she did sing a few more performances of Leonora. She also sang Nedda occasionally, but her most significant roles at the Met from now on were Siébel, Suzuki, the First Flower Maiden, Marzelline and Stéphano; it will be observed that some of these are soprano, some mezzo-soprano roles. She sang in several world premières: Enya in Horatio Parker’s Mona, Giulia in Giordano’s Madame Sans-Gene and La Badessa in Suor Angelica. She sang many other small roles, and participated in Sunday evening concerts: she even sang Euridice in a concert performance of Monteverdi’s Orfeo. In the 1908-9 season she sang no fewer than 48 performances in New York alone, besides appearances in the Met. tour. After 1915 she sang less frequently: Geraldine Farrar, a close friend, told Mr Moran that Fornia had problems with her health. On one occasion Farrar became hoarse during a performance of Faust in Brooklyn (on 29 November 1913), and Fornia, who was singing Siébel, stepped in to sing Marguerite in the last act, winning plaudits for her performance of the final trio, just the portion of the score in which Farrar herself would have felt the strain of the high tessitura (although the music was probably transposed a semitone down, as in Farrar’s recording of the trio). (Fornia had already sung the trio with Riccardo Martin and Adamo Didur in a Metropolitan Sunday concert on the 19th December 1909.) In her last season, 1920-21, she sang only nine performances, finishing her career as Suzuki to the Butterfly of her friend Farrar, with Gigli and Scotti in the cast, on the 7th April 1921. She was so much liked as Suzuki that during her career at the Met very few other mezzos got the opportunity to sing the role.

Fornia’s records sustain her reputation as a very fine singer and distinguished artist, and we can only conclude that she lacked the burning ambition that might have kept her in the major roles. In April 1909 she married the New York art dealer James P. Labey, and this happily successful marriage doubtless played its part in making her content to maintain a secondary position at the opera house. Fornia seems to have undergone an operation in New York in 1922, and on the 27th October she died at her sister’s home in Paris.

Mr Moran was unable to unearth any information about possible performances by Rita Fornia in Europe during her annual holiday from the Metropolitan. We can only assume that she must have made, or have been preparing to make, concert appearances — perhaps in Germany — for otherwise, how did she come to record such a charming selection of salon songs?

The records of Rita Fornia

We are grateful to have these records, and only surprised that Victor thought it worth while to issue a representative selection by a singer who, by 1910, was settling down into the position of a valued comprimaria. The trio from Madama Butterfly, a souvenir of her most famous role, Suzuki, is dominated by the elegantly doleful even though no longer very mellifluous singing of Antonio Scotti and the accurate but rather metallic contribution of Riccardo Martin. However, the solos from Faust and Roméo et Juliette are great records.

This was a period when Victor records could be tinny, spoiling the timbre even of singers like Caruso and Melba. The recording of the second, 10” version of Siébel’s Flower Song is kinder to the voice than the earlier 12” version, making the timbre seem warmer and richer. Fornia would seem to be typical of Jean de Reszke’s most successful students, such as Maggie Teyte, Rachel Morton or Lucile Marcel. Her voice is easily and naturally produced and floats on the breath; the registers are well blended and she can sing softly or loudly at any point of her scale. Though her voice cannot have sounded as important in the theatre as Brandt, Mantelli or Fabbri the quality is very attractive and her performances are exquisitely refined, suggesting that the concert hall might have offered her a rich field if her career had led her in that direction.

To compare the two versions of the Flower Song from Faust is to learn something of recording conditions in 1910. Both are excellent and stylish, but with less time available in the second take singer and conductor have to increase the tempo, although they still manage to use a great deal of tempo rubato. The earlier 12” version imparts important lessons in style — if only singers and conductors today could listen to it! Walter Damrosch (op.cit., p.65) tells how Lilli Lehmann instructed him during a rehearsal of La Juive: “Watch my lips when I sing, and you will know when I breathe and you will breathe with me; you will immediately also sense the tempo rubato which is such an important part in the proper phrasing of these older operas.” The way in which Fornia and her orchestra slow down and speed up in “Faites-lui mes aveux” will be a revelation to anyone who only knows this aria from modern performances, just as most conductors today would be very surprised to hear the elastic tempi of Patti, Melba, Eames and Adams — all of whom studied the music with Gounod — in the Jewel Song. The 12” version (matrix C-8659-4) is a very detailed performance: notice the first rallentando appropriately placed on the words “Que mon coeur nuit et jour Languit d’amour!”, soon followed by an accelerando to underline the crescendo of excitement at the words “Le secret de ma flamme”. A similar pattern of “give-and-take” is continued throughout the song. The recitative “Fanée!” is marvelously rendered with the voice coloured to match the changing sense of the words, and the aria ends with a virtuoso touch: the first high G on “un doux baiser” is taken pianissimo, the repetition forte. In both editions she makes one change to the words — “Q’elles se fanent?” instead of “Elles se fanent?” and in both she introduces appoggiaturas as if this were Italian music of c.1820; this is probably a “tradition” handed down at the Met. from the days of Scalchi. (Mantelli, however, does not include these appoggiaturas in her record.) Her singing of the “Chanson de Stéphano” from Roméo et Juliette is so fine that I often use this record as an example of bel-canto singing in the mezzo-soprano repertoire. Although she does not actually smile very much in what is, after all, an ironic aria, she is graceful and insinuating, and admirably precise in her execution of the triplets and the lightly sung but brilliant scale passage taking her easily up to high C. Here again, she and her conductor show their mastery of the art of rubato.

In her choice of songs she aims at a solid middle-class rather than an intellectual, concert-going audience. All of these records are beautifully sung, even “Aime-moi”, one of Pauline Viardot-Garcia’s Chopin arrangements: here we are far from the dazzling brilliance of Sembrich, but the execution is reasonably accurate and most pleasing. She catches the brisk, out-of-doors air of Godard’s “Chanson de Florian” but even better is the “Madrigal” of Chaminade, a very good song with a fine piano accompaniment, and here Fornia and Rosario Bourdon have a wonderful time with their playful rubati. Listening to the lovely tone, the easy vocalization and the charming manner of Fornia in a difficult song like this, one has the sensation that she must have been one of the greatest and most poular singers of her day — and yet she wasn’t!

The songs of Erik Meyer-Helmund, a singer-composer born in St. Petersburg and a pupil of Stockhausen, are melodious and highly singable; Fornia gives the famous “Zauberlied” with fine sustained tone, but she is even better in her deeply felt “Dein gedenk’ich, Margaretha”, in which she effectively contrasts her registers in the octave leaps from F to F. After a bumpy start she sweeps excitingly through Becker’s “Fruhlingslied”. Lassen’s favourite and much-recorded song “Allerseelen” was better sung in its English version, “All Souls’ Day”, by the neglected Eleanor Jones-Hudson. Eugen Hildach had a penchant for choosing sentimental lyrics to set to music for his wife to sing, and “Der Spielmann” is an effective, evocative song (in which the girl reveals to the old beggar violinist how she lost her innocence to a much young fiddler some while back) that rather taxes Fornia in the key of G — she might have sounded more relaxed a tone lower. (Even Alma Gluck, who sings this song in the same key, does not sound comfortable.) Still, she sings passionately and suggests something of the nostalgic longing so skilfully echoed in Howard Rattay’s beautifully played obbligato.

Though not a great star, then, Rita Fornia has left us a choice little group of records testifying to the excellence of the methods of Jean de Reszke. They demonstrate that even a singer without a great voice can come to possess an individual art and style that will still give pleasure almost a hundred years after her death.

©Michael Aspinall, 2007