This two CD-set represents a bit of a departure from our customary procedure for presenting the great musical artists of the “golden age.” This is the first time that we have featured four singers in one package. I had originally thought of combining the recordings of Eugenia Mantelli, Guerrina Fabbri, and Marianne Brandt, all of whose careers were firmly planted in the 19th century. In working out the logistics for the set, however, he found that we had some 40 minutes of extra time that we could use if we could come up with a suitable singer to fill the bill. Our friend and note writer, Michael Aspinall, suggested Rita Fornia, whose records I greatly admire but which are unknown to many collectors especially since she has been entirely neglected on CD reissues. Her records are not major rarities but they have never been plentiful and have always been avidly sought by those collectors who know how marvelous her singing is. This project has taken several years to evolve and perhaps I should give our listeners an idea of how it all came together.

The seed of this project originally stemmed from my keen interest in Eugenia Mantelli and my curiosity to hear as many of her recordings as I could find. Thirty years ago, I first heard Mantelli on an LP re-issue and was astonished at the magnificent coloratura facility that she displayed. I very much wanted to hear all of her recordings, but to my discouragement, none of my collector acquaintances had more than a small number of them. After 25 years of serious collecting, I have only seen a handful of Mantelli discs come up for sale and they always turn out to be the same seven or eight titles. Mantelli recorded exclusively for the U. S. Zonophone label, which had extremely limited distribution and were not available on any European labels. Record buyers of that time would have had to go out of their way to search out Mantelli’s discs and consequently, many of them are among the rarest of all records. In fact, of the 34 sides she was supposed to have recorded, there are still four that, to my knowledge, have never surfaced. They are: Carmen: “En vain pour éviter” (11011); Samson et Dalilah: “Mon couer s’ouvre à ta voix” (11016); Tosti’s “Ninon” (11017); and Rothschild’s “Si vous n’avez rien à me dire” (11018). We are fortunate that the missing titles are not indispensable, and thanks to the generosity of the collectors and archives we have listed, we have been able to assemble 30 of her records, among them two previously unpublished recordings in near perfect condition. We have not been so fortunate in finding mint copies of some of her other records, and in several instances, the only available copies were in deplorable state. I came very close to omitting them from this reissue but in the end, I decided to include them after all and with a bit of digital restoration, I hope that you will find them listenable. To complete this set, we were overjoyed to locate the three Brandt originals and excellent copies of the Fabbri 1903 G&Ts, which though primitively recorded, are marvelous examples of superlative singing and are also among the great record rarities.