Even more apt to draw you in is the singing. There has never been a more perfectly blended, poised contralto voice than that of Alice Raveau. She was fifty-two at the time of this recording, and had been singing Orphée since 1907. To hear her guiding her pure, centered tone (minimally vibrated, but never straight) through the weaving line of “Objet de mon amour” or “J’ai perdu mon Euridice” at the nexus of messa di voce and portamento that is the hallmark of all great singing, is to recognize complete mastery. The combination of registral bonding with clarity of French declamation produces a direct, open overall timbre that is different from that of the grand Anglo/American dames of opera and oratorio, and yet more unlike the chestier, more intensely vibrated Italian/Spanish contraltos and mezzos.^(I) (I touched on this in my posts on Samson et Dalila (Hélène Bouvier) and Pelléas et Mélisande (Claire Croiza). It seems to me the ideal sound for this role. With its relative emotional restraint, Raveau’s singing is undoubtedly quite different from that of the more highly charged Viardot-Garcia, and like contralto vocalities of all ethnicities and technical persuasions, is absent from the contemporary scene.

The other soloists of this Orphée are also splendid. The Euridice is Germaine Féraldy, the wonderful Manon of the 1929 Opéra-Comique recording under Élie Cohen. It’s a pity that the last section of the Orphée/Euridice scene is the most significant of the album’s omissions. But Féraldy gives us the charming pastoral couplets “Cet asile aimable et tranquille” and what remains of the duet in vibrant, outgoing tone and with incisive phrasing. And this performance’s treatment of Amour’s Act 1 aria, sung by Jany Delille, is among the sections most unlike anything we’d hear now, sung legato with full lyric tone and calming downward portamenti at a tempo perhaps 30% slower than what we’d anticipate—an entirely different view of the aria’s action and the character’s function. It’s possible to prefer more alacrity; but after the off-putting perkiness of the Met’s presentation, turning back to it came as balm for the sore-chafed soul.

My second recommendation is the 1952 broadcast of Act 2, sung in Italian, with Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra, the Robert Shaw Chorale, and the mezzo-soprano Nan Merriman as Orfeo. It couldn’t be more different from the Tomasi/Raveau rendering and still belong to the broad range of pre-performance-practice approaches to the score. Toscanini had first conducted the opera in 1907 at La Scala, and revived it at the Met two years later in a famous production starring Louise Homer, which played over several seasons. The company took it up again in the 1930s with Kirsten Thorborg under first Artur Bodanzky, then Erich Leinsdorf, and finally Bruno Walter, and once more in the 1950s with Risë Stevens, under Pierre Monteux (that’s where I came in). In the early 1900s Toscanini had been quite wayward with the score, among other things inserting Alceste’s “Divinités du Styx” into it (I assume at the end of Act 1, and I assume in transposition for Homer’s contralto). But in Act 2 in ’52, he’s playing it straight. Two years short of retirement, he leads the NBC with his customary decisiveness and at tempi that, though they seem quick after Tomasi’s, are actually quite measured. In a staged context, one could ask for more sprightliness of pulse in the purely instrumental dance numbers (about half the act’s music), but their firm profile and symphonic texture make for satisfying listening.