Without attempting anything like a discographic survey of early Fedora sides, I cannot resist mentioning two more that might easily escape notice. One is a true rarity, in that the artist sang almost entirely in secondary houses and did not record extensively. She was Elda Cavalieri, not to be confused with Lina, and one among her modest collection of recordings was of “O grandi occhi lucenti.” It’s my favorite of any I’ve heard, capturing the rapt feel of the opening section, ending it with a perfectly graded descent into chest at “O riso amma–liator!“, moving through the more cantabile bars that follow with great assurance and on into a beautiful, full, sustained top A, then concluding the monologue with a beguiling portamentoed connection out of the blended chest on E up to a poised C-sharp, rolling through the vowel mutation en route (“vita-a-in me“)—one of those characteristic effects available only to singers with both a mastery of the balances around the passaggio and a keen sense of how the co-ordination of the upward glide with the vowel transition brings us out at exactly the right spot. (Most sopranos make the alternate effect, breaking for a beat after “vita,” then fastening the button on “in me” over the resolving chord. There’s not a thing wrong with that, but Cavalieri’s way has greater charm. And charm is something Fedora can use.)

Finally, there is Ferruccio Corradetti’s wonderful rendition of Cirillo’s narrative, “Egli mi disse.” The migration of this cameo role from its designated baritone category to bass seems to have started early—singers of both types recorded this excerpt in the first ten or a dozen years of the work’s life, but after that the part has almost always been given to a bass. Of course, since the part reaches no higher than E-flat (though repeatedly, and with several different approaches, affects, and movements), the individual talent is more determinative than the vocal category. The bass Ernesto Dominici does well with it on Fedora‘s first complete recording (Columbia, 1931), and so does the gifted character bass Cristiano Dalamangas on the midcentury Cetra version. But baritone makes more sense, I think, partly for some contrast with the bass part of Gretch, but more importantly for the unweighted snap and alacrity a good baritone can bring to the recitation. And Corradetti was special—not as grand of voice as the leading baritones of the time, but an excellent singer, capable of doing well by many principal roles, and an interpreter of unusual rhetorical imagination and taste. He fully realizes the drama of the scene, and is virtually alone in containing the coachman’s high emotion in the sung tone rather than cascades of  fabricated sobs.

Once we are past this first generation, we are already out of Fedora’s world. Jeritza and Martinelli were great singers. I’ve no doubt they generated some heat in that ’20s Met production. But their recorded excerpts (two selections each, from the years of that revival), though extremely well sung, sound prosaic in comparison with the extracts discussed above. The first complete recording brings a whiff of the old days in the Fedora of Gilda dalla Rizza, who sounds almost like a Bellincioni impersonator. Her singing is not predominantly pleasurable, however, and until the last act neither is that of her Loris, Antonio Melandri, in worse voice than on the Mefistofele and Cavalleria of that series, and lachrymose to boot. It is a shame that the orchestra is so dully and faintly recorded on the 1950 Cetra performance (RAI Milano, under Mario Rossi), because it is Maria Caniglia’s best postwar recording; Giacinto Prandelli is as poetic a Loris as modern manners will allow him to be; and Scipio Colombo is a reasonable facsimile of Corradetti—but as De Siriex, not Cirillo. This side of the midcentury mark, you’re on your own, and there’s quite a lot out there, if you’ve appetite for the search.

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COMING ATTRACTIONS: We have new productions of two masterworks, Lohengrin and Don Giovanni, on tap at the Met. I’m looking in on the Lohengrin in mid-March, so I’ll be shooting for Friday, March 31, for that post. Don Giovanni doesn’t happen till May, so somewhere along the way I’ll be writing about two important Wagner releases, the Immortal Performances assemblage of the 1933 Leider/Melchior/Bodanzky Tristan, and Marston’s six-CD retrospective of the superb German baritone Herbert Janssen.

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