Take Barrientos and Pinkert.^(I) The former (b. 1883, Spanish), whose records are invariably charming, debuted the year she turned 15, as Ines in L’Africana, and was quickly established at major European and South American houses, and then at the Met, as Lakmé, Gilda, all the ‘inas, et al., as well as in the present role. She restricted herself to concert and recital work after age 40. Pinkert (b. 1869), a Polish soprano and Marchesi pupil, debuted a bit later (age 23) and soon triumphed at La Scala in, among other roles, Elvira, with Bonci. Before coming to the Manhattan company she had sung the same repertory in most of the same places as Barrientos. In Barrientos’ recording of the “Qui la voce,” with both verses of “Vien diletto,” we hear a light-sounding soprano of exactly that bright, lean, and taut sort, which despite its lightness clearly had a penetrating effect, with shine on the fuller tones and a mastery of the diminuendo throughout the range. She holds the midrange cavatina, a midrange piece with A-flats at the top, on a clear, tensile line, and flashes through the cabaletta with cheery freedom, capped by an easy tossing-off of elaborate ornamentation at the close. Note that the moment she descends into passaggio territory (on E flats), an open but closely matched voce di petto gives her a springy launching pad for all that lies higher. Later in her singing life she premiered and recorded several of Manuel de Falla’s suites of songs, including the Sietes canciones popolares, which with their snapped-off flamenco-like gestures alternating with delicate pianissimi require above all the kind of strong, open midrange that can only come from a tight knitting with the voce di petto. On the four sides of Pinkert I’ve heard, she treats the chest voice with more circumspection, and with vowels not quite as consistently open (she was Polish, after all), but her set-up is similar to Barrientos’: a bright, strongly vibrated tone, with great alacrity on anything that moves and a well-sustained legato where called for. These voices were of light calibre but functionally strong, and obviously carried well.

But the two singers who best illustrate the strength of the older soprano structuring in this repertory are Marcella Sembrich (b. 1858, née Kochanska, again Polish, with debut at age 19, in I Puritani), who sang that lone Met Elvira in 1883, and Luisa Tetrazzini (b. 1871, debut 1892—like Pinkert, as Ines), and successor to Pinkert’s roles in the second season of the Manhattan Opera Company (though Puritani was now gone), creating a sensation with them. Sembrich made her first recordings in 1903, apart from what we hear of her on the live Mapleson cylinders (1900-1904), whereon, through primitive sound, we can at moments catch her voice soaring out into the auditorium of the old Met in excerpts from four operas, perhaps most notably in the finale of the La Clemenza scene of Ernani. So her recordings are from age 45 and up (to 50, in 1908), and are on early acousticals, which so far as completeness of tone is concerned penalized sopranos more than any other voice. We can assume that her sound is more mature than it must have been in that 1877 Puritani, but not that its basic technical structure has changed; with a singer continually before the public in major venues, that cannot have happened. In her “Qui la voce,” one of her latest records, the timbre is girlishly bright and pure, but the positioning of a rock-like firmness, the dips into chest less open than Barrientos’, more the sort we would identify with a medium-weight mezzo, and woven seamlessly into the texture. Many phrases begin with little acciaccature from above, and the legato is unfailingly linked. The cabaletta discloses fearsome attacks on the series of volates that progress to those D-flats. The trill is perfect, the embellishments near the end executed with the ease of a champion gymnast. Powerful and pure as the high notes are, she interpolates no E-flat at the close, and it’s not missed.