All this can be analogized in terms of style, temperament, and national musical development. Bacon notes—a little ruefully, I think—that “They [the Italians] have an opera,” which the English hadn’t, and still hadn’t when these tenors entered the scene, a few nice pieces of light-opera-ish sentiment by Balfe, Wallace, and Goring Thomas aside (plus, of course, the peerless effervescence of the G & S operettas, which don’t enter the picture here). They had ballad opera (Reeves did tours as Captain Macheath in his later years), and they had the towering exemplar of Handel. But this was the Handel of oratorio, not of opera. Bacon, ceding to the Italians a more advanced development of the art of singing and of the expression of dramatic passion, yet has strongly supportive words for what he considers English virtues of dignity, restrained taste in emotional expression, “grandeur,” “majesty,” and even “severity,” and all these are seen as aspects of the English vocalist’s highest calling, that of noble religious expression. It is as if the presence of too glamorous a tone, of any hint at sensuality, would be inappropriate and exhibitionistic, like a low-cut dress or a zoot suit at Sunday service. It’s in that spirit, I think, that these singers are best heard.

The Marston team has elected to restrict the repertoire here to music of English composers, Handel and Mendelssohn being declared for England, which with respect to their oratorios is fair enough. Thus, we don’t hear Hislop as Faust or the Duke or the Puccini Des Grieux, Nash as Ferrando or Faust or the Massenet Des Grieux, Widdop as Siegmund, Booth in any of the operatic extracts he recorded in the early ’40s, Tudor Davies as Turiddu or Henry Wendon as Lohengrin.^(I) We do, though, get each of these in characteristic form. A sampling: Hislop offers a beguiling Afton Water and Nash, among five selections, a very eloquent rendition of “Deeper and deeper still” and “Waft her, angels” from Jephtha (a coupling of recitative and aria that apparently originated with Braham), as well as two songs by Delius that seem to be working their way toward something Impressionistically profound, but never quite get there. Widdop brings us “Love sounds the alarm” (Acis and Galatea) and “Where’er you walk” (Semele),  both very stylish, and showing his voice’s odd but attractive combination of soft-textured, “mixed” quality and broad span. The harp-accompanied “How beautiful they are” from Rutland Boughton’s mystical The Immortal Hour is well sung by Booth, and is an excellent test of how far you’re willing to go into the twee peculiar. Making one’s way through CD 1, I was almost shocked, upon arriving at Track 17, to suddenly hear Tudor Davies’ brash tone and aggressive attack jump out with a passage from Elgar’s The Saga of King Olaf. The music is sweaty, but the over-the-top, excitably vibrated vocalism is bracing. He also sings two songs (including the old Hagemann favorite, Do not go, my love), whereon his clotted pronunciation is a drawback, despite good tone and line. Wendon sings two more inviting songs (Easthope Martin’s Come to the fair and the traditional The road to the isles) with great relish for word and rhythm (abetted by Gerald Moore’s shiny, animated touch and feel for the rhythmic gesture, instantly recognizable to those of us who heard him often), and Johnston’s rendition of the Hugh the Drover song has satisfying tone and spirit.