Customer Reviews

The Music of Victor Herbert

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This CD is just fabulous. It is hard to believe that these performances were recorded over 50 years ago as the sound is so lifelike it leaps out of your speakers, especially on "Naughty Marietta" and "The Red Mill", both of which feature the always superb Gordon MacRae, who has the perfect voice for Victor Herbert's lovely melodies and he is joined on "Marietta" by Marguerite Piazza, one of opera and musical theatre's greatest sopranos, who is sadly underrepresented on CD and is arguably the best Marietta ever. "The Red Mill" features Lucille Norman, another wonderful singer from the days of radio. "Sweethearts", the oldest recording in this compilation, features another golden voiced baritone, Earl Wrightson, joined by Frances Greer, Jimmy Carroll & Christina Lind with beautiful arrangements by Al Goodman. If you are a fan of Gordon MacRae or if you want to hear some of the most beautiful songs ever composed for the musical stage by one of its greatest composers, Victor Herbert, this splendidly restored CD is a must-have.

Anteater Records may not have access to the original Capitol and Victor masters, but the sound on this disc is very very good nonetheless.

THE RED MILL and NAUGHTY MARIETTA were Originally released on 10" Lp's as part of a series Capitol produced based on MacRae's popular and long-running RAILROAD HOUR programs. Despite the title, this was a half-hour program presenting condensations of famous musicals and operettas with just enough dialogue to set up each song. (The plots were often re-written and frequently bore little resemblance to the actual stage text.) These albums are not taken from broadcasts, but were re-recorded in Capitol's studios and present just the music. There are lushly orchestrated by George Greeley and often weave in some of the lesser known songs from each score. I have long suspected that these 24-minute condensations were the inspiration for Readers' Digest when they produced their mammoth 12-LP box set A TREASURY OF GREAT OPERETTAS. Digest has a full cast for each production, whereas on Capitol it is just MacRae, his leading lady and chorus but since the focus here is on the romantic numbers that really isn't a detriment.

Though the orchestrations are very much in a 1950s lush Hollywood style, they do seem to compliment the material even if this is not how these shows sounded on stage in the early years of the 20th century.

For the record the others that MacRae and company recorded were: THE MERRY WIDOW, STUDENT PRINCE, VAGABOND KING, NEW MOON, DESERT SONG and ROBERTA. I, for one, would be happy to have Anteater reissue these as well.

The selections from SWEETHEARTS are a bit older, taken from a 78-rpm album produced by RCA Victor with Al Goodman's orchestra and soloists. The SWEETHEARTS album was for many years the only available recording of this score and RCA reissued it on LP in 1951, and on their budget Camden label in 1957. These issues have been out-of-print for close to 50 years now, which makes this issue most welcome. The performances and sound quality are not as good as the Capitol albums, and curiously the SWEETHEARTS album contained only six songs from the show with two additional Herbert songs (To the Land of My Own Romance & I Might Be Your One-in-a-While) tacked on at the end.

As with the MacRae Capitol albums, this was one of a series that Al Goodman did for Victor. Others were: BLOSSOM TIME, ROSE MARIE, THE NEW MOON, EILEEN, THE DESERT SONG, THE CHOCOATE SOLDIER and several Gilbert and Sullivan pieces.

Collectors must be grateful to Anteater Records for giving us these nicely remastered CD editions. The only improvement I would suggest its to get some proper liner notes added. A booklet with a show history and synopsis for each operetta would be most welcome.

I enjoyed this cd very much I love Victor Herbert and these were great examples of his work.

This is an enjoyable collection of Victor Herbert's music, and I can recommend it! The first two operettas are radio performances from "The Railroad Hour" hosted by Gordon MacRae. In "Naughty Marietta," Gordon MacRae (a baritone/tenor) sang two solos, the best and loveliest was "I'm Falling in Love With Someone." It was GREAT! He also sang duets with Marguerite Piazza (a soprano) and the blend of their voices was good! "The Red Mill" co-starred Lucille Norman (a soprano) with Gordon. He sang several duets with her, and they also had a good blend. Beautiful!! Some pieces were sung by a chorus only, and Lucille and Gordon had solos each. Lovely!! The recording for the operetta, "Sweethearts," is from a stage performance and features four lead singers, including Frances Greer (a soprano) and Jimmy Carroll (a tenor). Greer and Carroll sang some beautiful duets together. Earl Wrightson was a very good baritone, and he also sang an excellent duet with Greer as well as a fine solo.

These are good "Railroad Hour" recordings that I bought primarily for Gordon MacRae's performances. The recordings has been released in various formats over the years (Capitol 10", RCA Camden) and with good a late-forties "boxy" sound Performances are fair to good and orchestrations are updated by unobtrusive. The problem is that I have only been able to play this CD once. After the first playing, my CD machines no longer recognise the disc. Sorry, guys, it's unplayable.

Well, well, well, we have come full circle. I totally agree with the reviewer who knows so much about all the Al Goodman Albums. However, the oldest of them was THE STUDENT PRINCE, which claimed to be released in 1945!On careful examination of the time it took to conduct the recording, and produce the album, it was recored EARLIER BY FAR, and tells the whole story of who EARL WRIGHTSON was, a sad manipulated, man, who fronted, as many did, for Joseph Toner's voice.

There is even an " EARL WRIGHTSON" album so old, it dates from 1928! Among the Al Goodman albums, one was so great, and so rare, even a pro-shubert EXPERT called for it's reproduction, EILEEN. It was the ONLY Victor Herbert Operetta which grew from his heart, and was the earliest in the series, putting it smack in the middle of the 30's!

I am here to tell people that this album fraudulently states when each of the operettas were performed.

Why? Joseph Toner was the first, maybe second, Fred Stone, confrimed by searches of the National Theatre. Look at the boy in that photo. Is he 33 years old? I have more photos now, and they can be seen at "Joseph Toner, Broadway Legend", if Amazon does not object. (They have had fluky decisions or have been hacked themselves recently????)

Just goes to show how important Joseph Toner was to the theatre. Soon we will have an album of the ORIGINAL SINGER of The Red Mill, Naughty Marietta, Sweethearts, and to top it off the COMPLETE EILEEN. Proceedes will go to Arts in Education. Personally, I think Eileen was Victor Herbert's triumph, but it only had 64 showings due to the anti-Irish sentiment.

To set records straight, The Red Mill came out in 1906. Naughty Marietta came out in 1912, Sweethearts the following year. EILEEN was 1917.

And sadly for Gordon MacRae fans, I have his ORIGINAL Red Mill performance, and this is NOT GORDON MACRAE. He cannot reach the notes that the singer in this album reaches. He is a great singer, and his performance on other CD's, for which he is more famous, do not match this disc on voice recognition technology. This disc bears the FBI seal. They are not happy being made fools of. But that is not something for me to reveal more than I have.

Do not buy this disc. Better is yet to come. And it is wrong to lie about a great composer's work or the singers who bring that work to life, including but not only, JOSEPH TONER, BROADWAY LEGEND. Amazon requires that you use quotes to find the site or you will end up reviewing ALI the boxer, and others!Muhammad Ali: The Whole Story [VHS] See the review!

To see more of Joseph Toner, Broadway Legend, see all my reviews, and remember to search using the QUOTES. (Personally I liked Ali, so no complaints here--lol!) Meanwhile, if Amazon is very, very good, I will give everyone the Scoop, here on AMAZON, about SHOW BOAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In Hammerstein's dying words!Show Boat (1946 Broadway Revival Cast)