My farthest reach back is to the season of 1934-35—January 5, to be exact. To this event I can claim only the most tenuous live-performance connection: the only one of its singers I saw perform was the Germont, Lawrence Tibbett, and that in his last Met appearance, in 1950 as Prince Khovansky. Fortuitously, the Violetta of this Met broadcast is Ponselle, thus preserving for us the pairing of these singers, frequently (and accurately, I believe) touted as the first two entirely American-trained artists to attain world-class status in opera. The performance is conducted by Ettore Panizza, head of the company’s Italian wing after the departure of Tullio Serafin, and its Alfredo is Frederick Jagel.

To stipulate: Rosa Ponselle was indubitably a great singer, and still had lots of voice at her disposal in 1935. Violetta is a longer role than Germont, harder to sing, and expressively more varied. Nonetheless,Tibbett, then at his peak, is the star of this Traviata. In fact, though we can find earlier renditions of “Di provenza” that we might, by a slim margin, prefer on specific vocal or stylistic grounds (two candidates would be Riccardo Stracciari’s and Giuseppe de Luca’s), and the succession of baritones on complete recordings cited earlier gives us plenty of handsome singing to sort through, I believe Tibbett’s Germont, like his Simon Boccanegra and his Iago (perhaps even his Rigoletto) is supreme among all we have. The authority and dignity of the character are established on the instant of his entrance by the solidity and color of the voice itself and by the thrust and verbal profile of his declamation. In the eloquent passages that follow (“Pura siccome un angelo,” “Un dì, quando le veneri,” “Piangi, piangi o misera,” “No, generosa, vivere“) his unfailing pursuit of the legato line and his ability to emerge from the tenderest of mezza-voces to crowning forte climaxes in a completely natural progression are unequalled in their effect, while the recitative exchanges between have the easy rhetorical grasp of a born actor. The intrusion at Flora’s party has all the command we would expect. Other baritones, perhaps, have comparable voices, but don’t do these things, or don’t do them as well; others may do them, but without a comparable voice.

The aria itself is fascinating, particularly for one who has pawed through just about every existing byte of Tibbett, as I’ve had occasion to recently do. He left a number of versions, some faster some slower, some (not necessarily the earliest) very young-sounding, others more mature in tone. None, strangely, is a commercial studio recording—RCA Victor was asleep at the switch on this surefire best-seller. This is by some margin the slowest of the bunch. (Despite his early apprenticeship under Toscanini, Panizza’s tempi are sometimes very slow, though they never lose tension. This is also opera time, not radio show time—this may have been Tibbett’s usual tempo, regardless of conductor.) I love it. The luxurious expansion gives the singer all possible room for his melting diminuendi, for tipping in the articulations. He has an adventure on the last F (final syllable of “Dio m’esaudì“), attacking it at mezzo piano, sustaining and then gradually swelling it (something he attempts on no other version—possibly he had a complete swell-and-diminish in mind), finding it’s not working but hanging on, re-grouping, trying again, and finally fighting through to an on-pitch forte, though a rather gritty one. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Callas’ stubborn scratchiness (or, at times, vertiginous wobbliness) on that fil di voce A on “finì”  at the end of “Addio del passato.” Come to think of it, Callas and Tibbett had important things in common: preternatural theatricality, instinctive feel for the dramatic qualities of music, outsized ambition to take on ill-advised challenges and maintain feverish schedules, and self-destructive lifestyles that helped shorten their skyrocket careers. And genius.