Stignani recorded the two Act 2 arias, in Italian, in 1946, and it’s partly because her magnificent voicings can be heard in reasonably good electrical sound that she’s my exemplar of a Southern-style Dalila. ^(I))Do we call her a contralto or a mezzo? Mezzo, I think, largely because of her full-voiced sustained high notes, right up to the C-flat in “O don fatale,” which we seldom (ever?) find in contraltos of any origin. Nonetheless, her categorization as “contralto” in some sources (Kutsch and Riemens, for instance) isn’t without some grounding in the depth and voluminousness of her tone. As with all the truly great-voiced singers, she and Homer are just across my left-right midline from each other. Yet the North/South boundary, if not the contralto/mezzo one, is clearly marked in the different ways Homer and Stignani accomplish the filling-in of the lower-middle range I mentioned above. Homer expertly blends the whole passaggio neighborhood. Between D-flat and E, and even at full voice and on open vowels, while we can usually declare that we’re hearing chest notes, they have a great deal of “head” overlay. With Stignani, there’s less of that—yet the sharper definition of the chest doesn’t create a musical disruption or inequality in strength. A perfect phrase to make the comparison is the one ending both verses of “Mon coeur“: “. . . verse moi l’ivresse,” which weaves down onto the low B-flat on “moi,” then back up to sustain the F on “l’ivresse.” The whole phrase is marked forte, with the final notes accented, but it’s perfectly plausible to put “l’ivr-e-esse” on the head side of the line (that would be the preference of most contemporary singers and teachers), the trick then being to give it sufficient underpinning to make it sound present and complete.

This Homer certainly does, with an effect that is settled and invitational. Stignani, though, after a rich excursion through the low end of the phrase, takes a breath and holds the F pronouncedly on the chest side. It sounds entirely comfortable, not “pushed up” or distorted, and the vibrancy suggests a different sort of lovemaking, electric and perhaps combative. True, the languages are not the same. But in the immediate context, the difference is insignificant—”l’ebrezza” instead of “l’ivres-se.” It’s the lifelong set of a language, and the habits of expression and temperament, that count. Perhaps they are even the real determinants of voice type, and that with those elements swapped off, Homer might have been the dramatic mezzo, Stignani the contralto. In any case, these are two great voices for this role.