Customer Reviews

EJS: Discography of the Edward J. Smith Recordings: "The Golden Age of Opera," 1956-1971 (Discographies)

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Eddie Smith was personally known to many friends and acquaintances of mine, and I at least knew his work, which the moguls of the world's biggest record companies called piracy. Eddie produced about a thousand pirate records, almost all of them of operatic performances originating from the Metropolitan Opera, in New York City, the remainder coming from virtually every other opera house in the Western world.

Americans seldom question conventional wisdom, especially when it comes with a seal of approval from the government or a television talking head, and one of the things they have been told for decades is that making and distributing pirate recordings is a Bad Thing, in part because they left "struggling artists" (Callas, Pavarotti, Norman, Gheorghiu, and the like) to suffer the loss of royalty revenues. Rubbish! Everyone who has ever met an actual living, breathing opera buff knows that the acquisition of a pirate recording never once deterred him from buying a commercial recording. Eddie's clients were operatic omnivores: they wanted EVERY performance they could lay their hands on by the singers they treasured and pursued from role to role, theater to theater, and city to city.

Gratitude is due the publisher (Greenwood Press, a household name in reference publishing) and the editors (Messrs. Shaman, Collins, and Goodwin) of this volume and its sequel, "More EJS" (what else would it be called?), for producing a truly outstanding work of reference. The editors leave no stone unturned in their quest for full and accurate documentation of Smith's releases, which were noted for two things above all: the miserable quality of their production and the near-complete absence of documentation of any sort. Smith's failings in these areas may well have been deliberate. Certain institutions and singers--the Met and Jessye Norman are examples in each category that come to mind--used their influence to bring the heavy hand of state power down upon record pirates. The better a pirate's productions, the hotter the pursuit by the Mets and Jessyes of this world. Smith got hammered more than once, of course, but the pirates who produced better-sounding, better-looking stuff got hammered much harder and much more often.

Forty and more years ago, most of the collectors and fans of my acquaintance knew, as did I, that Eddie Smith, the documenter of live operatic performances, was a priceless historical and cultural resource. This thoroughly researched, scholarly book and its sequel are the tribute that Eddie has long merited.