And what of the great Act 4 duet, and Shaw’s “most exciting situation in lyric drama”? Well, it is a “high stakes” scene. Valentine, rejected but still in love with Raoul, married off to Nevers who is then arrested by St. Bris as traitor to the conspiracy, desperately tries to persuade Raoul to stay with her rather than go to a certain death. She at length confesses that she loves him, and they share moments of emotional consummation (here come the broad, vaulting phrases) until the sounding of the bronze summons Raul to tear himself from her and join his doomed co-religionists. The Marston programming conscientiously strings together an original-language series of sides from the scene, with the highly capable Antoinette Laute-Brun as Valentine. Unfortunately, the Raoul is Agustarello Affre. He was a leading tenor of the Opéra, and crops up on many recordings, including a complete Roméo et Juliette opposite Yvonne Gall. He can hold, for dear life, a strong line, and reach the required notes. But the sound is relentlessly pressed and edgy, and straight in the upper range. If you imagine an aged (post-1940) French Martinelli, noble and determined of intention but ugly of effect, laboring to surmount this writing, you’ll be pretty close to Affre’s singing, at least as recorded circa 1908-09. We must look elsewhere.

From the veils of noise that sequester most of this scene from us on a Mapleson cylinder of a 1901 Metropolitan Opera performance, the voices of the legendary Jean de Reszke and Lillian Nordica briefly emerge on the soaring melody. One can’t tell much from the sounds, but once you have heard them, you will recollect them when you hear the far more listenable studio recording made a few years later, in German, by Karl Jörn and Emmy Destinn. Jörn sends the phrase up and over the first time on a full-throated, dark falsetto—an eerie, mournful sound with a hint of predestination in it. It is somewhat related to isolated effects produced by Caruso or Jacques Urlus, but more closely to that of Homer or Onegin launching similar parabolas an octave higher in “Ah, mon fils” (Le Prophète). Jörn seals the join with full voice expertly, and on the repeat reinforces the blend to nudge it just over the line. Destinn, a true dramatic soprano, matches him faultlessly, restraining the big voice to etch in the line, as the best of the old-style sopranos knew how to do. I doubt that what Jörn does is what Nourrit did—I think the whole set of his voice was different—but I’m fairly sure it’s similar to how De Reszke, from all descriptions a more poetic artist than Jörn, was handling this music technically. And to judge from some of his recordings calling for mixed voice in the upper range (Dame Blanche, Königin von Saba), Leo Slezak must have had some magical moments, different from any created by modern tenors, in this scene. Regrettably, though he and Sophie Sedlmair recorded long portions of the duet, the portion missing is this one, the heart of it. At a couple of moments, though, Sedlmair does something none of our other Valentines has managed: she suggests a passionate woman, at once ecstatic and terrified by the “exciting situation.”