Customer Reviews

Complete Grammophone Recordings, Vol. 4: The Hayes and London Recordings, 1921-26

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Thanks to splendid reissues such as this, Dame Nellie Melba, once the most celebrated soprano in the world, is still a presence for C21st century listeners.

Collected here, and completing the Naxos series reissuing her EMI recordings, is everything she recorded between 1921 and 1926. As is well known, the opportunity was taken, soon after the introduction of the electrical recording process, to record her farewell appearance at Covent Garden in June 1926. Two acts of "La Boheme"and the last act of "Otello" were performed. Of the many 78 sides made on location that proved to be technically acceptable, Melba would allow only three to be issued in her lifetime - one of which was her farewell speech. Well, they are all assembled here, allowing us to hear her with some of her younger compatriot Australians whose careers she promoted.

Six months later, she initiated a final recording session to help forward the career of one of them, the 26 year old baritone John Brownlee. "It was for her a trying afternoon," wrote producer Fred Gaiberg in his memoirs.

These final four sides are here too, Melba's only studio electrically recorded items, two of them in duet with John Brownlee. I urge all readers, even those who might have written Melba off as a famous singer stunning in performance but luckless in recording studios to go first to Track 17 on this CD. Hear the voice, rock steady, still able to provide dynamic contrasts and with an occasional gleam on it, in perfect ensemble with John Brownlee, and unimpeded by fierce surface hiss. For some reason the other three items from this final recording session are not nearly as vivid.

Restoration engineer Ward Marston, with help from various sources, compiled this invaluable 70 minute CD.

Several of these selections give modern opera lovers their only clear vocal image of Melba. Collectors of ancient opera recordings are, through years of familiarity, capable of making allowances for the sounds on the acoustic records. However; most listeners cannot: because of this the few electrical recordings on this CD offer the only viable chance for most of us to hear Melba in something like her natural sound. Of special interest is her haunting singing of the Willow Song - Melba's style founded on the Marchesi method of breath support gives a supernatural quality, an eerie and haunting other-worldliness to this most affecting of simple melodies. People claimed Melba was not a great actress but this gives the lie to that. Listen in particular to the non-pareil pianissimo, the beautiful tone projected and sustained without any apparent effort. No one living can sing like this. Moreover, Melba achieves her effects on a listener through a living melody rather than the declamatory or push and pull vocalism we hear today from even our best vocalists. Melba's extraordinary aliveness, kept on leash and which she flaunts like a Goddess snapping off bolts of lightning, suggests an undaunted will and irrepresible energy . She was certainly a true Queen of Opera.
The Naxos issue is the fourth and last in a series, the others are all from acoustic horns, and should be purchased only by knowledgeable collectors. Melba was born the year the American Civil War began - thus these recordings made in the twenties when she was in her sixties offer further proof of just how remarkably well-schooled a singer she was.