Björling was fortunate in his recording undertakings. He was in his mature prime, as was analogue recording technology of the monophonic variety, when the LP bomb went off. And while it is true that no recording captures fully the sheen of any great voice, Björling’s took very well to the mike, and in some instances benefited from it, amplifying its comparatively slender, focused span, bringing its often magical lyrical shadings up close, and riding on the free ring of the upper notes into climactic spinto territory. None of us who heard him in the ’50s would have taken him for an in-house Canio, Calaf, or, probably, Radames—yet at least the last two come off well on those ’50s recordings, and even the first is not exactly a flop. Of the excerpts included on Vol. 4 of the same Wiener Staatsoper Live series I cited in my recent Fliegende Holländer posts, which are among the earliest live-performance artifacts we have of the adult Björling (1936-37), two of the sequences are in fact from Aïda and Pagliacci. These are operas he never undertook at the Metropolitan, so it’s interesting to hear him singing these bits and pieces on his first excursions away from the friendly confines of the Royal Opera in Stockholm, recorded on apparatus of the time positioned in the flies of the opera house, and singing in his native Swedish, with the heady, let-us-gather-together tendencies of its mixed vowels. And for sure, this is no Italian tenore di forza, or even strong lirico-spinto voice, nor quite a  Jugendlich Heldentenor, either. It’s a willowy sapling, not a sturdy oak. Yet such is its free ring, its gleam, its quickness, that we hear how it must have carried out into the house and cleared away from thicker competing sounds. And we hear how the release of the upper notes made for consistently exciting climactic effects, even though their sheer mass was not that of a heroic voice. A keynote studio recording from this early time would be the exhilarating, freely swinging “Au Mont Ida” from Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène, making a sort of matched pair with Rosvaenge’s dizzying song of Chapelou from Adam’s Le Postillon de Longjumeau—in both cases, altitudinous French operetta pieces sung in the “wrong” language (Swedish; German), for which the singers seem overqualified, only to make us realize that no, everyone else is underqualified.

Another good sampling of the prewar Björling is the Met Il Trovatore of Jan. 11, 1941. It is worth listening to for other reasons than Björling’s presence. You will not hear a snappier, crisper, more disciplined rendition of the orchestral score than that led by Ferruccio Calusio, Argentinian compatriot of Ettore Panizza and an associate of Toscanini’s from the La Scala days (why was his Met sojourn so brief?). And even from the great Italian mezzos of the ’30s (Stignani, Minghini-Cattaneo) or the ’50s (Barbieri, Simionato) you won’t hear a better-sung, more imaginative and emotionally committed Azucena than Bruna Castagna’s (try the “Condotta,” and see if you don’t agree). Even the Di Luna of the young Francesco Valentino, deputizing for Alexander Sved, might pleasantly surprise you, and Norina Greco’s Leonora isn’t always out of the ballpark. And here is Björling, a little later in the season that had opened with the above-mentioned Ballo, in one of the roles with which he became most closely identified, and singing now in Italian. Perhaps this is the place to note that while New York’s critics were generally pleased with the young newcomer from the time of his local debut (1938, in La Bohème), they were not invariably blown away. There was of course a range of response, but the consensus seems to have been that while this was a tenor of pleasing quality and a generally sound technique, capable of many beautiful moments in purely lyrical passages, it was perhaps of smallish calibre for the Met’s auditorium in some of the roles he was being given, and that its owner needed to beware of forcing for effect as a result. However we may evaluate the opinions of these gentlemen (they’re a mixed bag, but at least there was a tidy quantity of them, vetted by someone along the way), one can from time to time recognize where these reservations came from. To hear this soaring line, this clarity, this musicality of phrase, these blandishments of tone, from a contemporary perspective is to be lifted into an enjoyment bubble that just doesn’t drift our way anymore. Yet there are places where the voice does sound on the light side for this music. We do hear touches of tentativeness in the “Ah si, ben mio,” and are forced to declare a draw in the high C dustup of “Di quella pira” (the first one, at “o TE-co almen” pops out bright and shiny, the second, on “all’a-a-a-r-mi!” thins out and doesn’t ride out over the chorus. These are momentary exceptions to a beautifully sung Manrico, but they’re there.