Whatever the fascinations of la Bellincioni, in a search for a standard I probably must offer you an example or two from performers more widely agreed upon as great singers per se. In my book, I propose Luisa Tetrazzini as not only the counterpart of Joan Sutherland in my groupings of greatvoiced singers across a functional midline, but as the most structurally complete of all high-soprano instruments. Fortunately, she recorded the complete Act 1 double aria twice, in 1908 and 1911 (though the ’11 eliminates the “È strano!” recitative), and the “Addio del passato” in 1913. (It is one of our limitations, of course, that in these early years, singers seldom recorded anything but the principal arias of their roles, so that while from Act 2 of La Traviata we have some recordings of the tenor aria and a profusion to the point of excess of the baritone one, and from Act 1, Scene 2, only a couple of discs of the so-called “Scena della borsa,” we have very little that shows us sopranos of the top class dealing with the midvoice dramatics of the central Violetta/Germont scene.) I won’t take space here with Tetrazzini’s resumé. Suffice it to say that in sheer size of voice coupled with full-throated range extension, brilliance of tone, and accuracy of florid execution, her only peer is Sutherland, and that in this matter of grounding in the musicalized chest, coupled with a bull’s-eye attack and a tensile poise on the engagement (“support,” if you wish) that gives her an unquestioned control of intonation and dynamics throughout her long compass, she is not only Sutherland’s near-opposite, but unique even among the sopranos of her time, who themselves aspired to that technical structure. With these gifts she created a sensation everywhere she sang, and among her roles Violetta was one of the most acclaimed. Tetrazzini sings both parts of the Act 1 scene in key, complete with the interpolated high E-flat in “Sempre libera,” along with perfectly balanced top As (but tensile, not “floated”) on those “-ti” syllables in “Ah, fors’è lui,” and some quite expressive (and beautifully executed) decorations similar to Bellincioni’s. The passaggio Fs on “lui” and “sovente” are in the light chest, and that is also where she crosses into chest on the descending run at “oh gioia ch’io non co-NOB-bi.” (Marcella Sembrich does this, too, trouble-free and even in scale.) Both here and in the “Addio del passato,” she makes no special effort at long-breathed phrases—but unlike Bellincioni, we never get a sense of having to foreshorten. In the “Addio,” she does not take the verse-ending A on “finì” with the marked “fil di voce,” but attacks it at mezzo-forte, then sings not a long, exhibitionistic diminuendo, but a short, sad fade. Throughout, vowel formation is open and clear, never “covered,” and whether or not one finds the occasional resort to the so-called “bamboletta” sound on a couple of the softer lower-middle notes appealing, these open “a” and “e” sounds do have the advantage of staying positionally in line with the upper chest range just below. As with so many aria recordings of that era with their 78 rpm side-timing limits, the “Sempre libera” is taken at an undesirably fast clip, which shows the singer’s impressive athletic capabilities, but cramps the expressive possibilities.