By way of tiding us over till the start of a new season, I’m reviving an otherwise obscure article from my archive that I think will interest many readers. It’s another in the series of pieces I wrote for the Sunday New York Times in the early 1990s, whose re-publishing rights I was able to retain.^(I) This one, from July of 1991, was occasioned by the release of a fresh batch of VHS tapes (the last, I believe) of videocasts from The Firestone Hour in the 1950s and ’60s. So we’re looking back on a look back. Although we can regret the absence of many of the great singers of those times from the entire series (I can cite Cesare Siepi, Birgit Nilsson, Leontyne Price, and Jon Vickers as a Big Four not found here), there is plenty here to remind us of how different a standard was then applicable to the practice of operatic singing.   

As most classical music collectors know, there are Firestones about. Some are only old tires, but others are videotapes released by Video Artists International. With two exceptions (Jose Greco in a program of Spanish dance, Fred Waring celebrating Easter), these are tapes of singers singing on The Voice of Firestone, the telecast sponsored from 1949 to 1963 by the people who made the old tires. A fresh release, featuring several artists new to the series (Dorothy Kirsten with Mario Sereni, Blanche Thebom, Helen Traubel, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Jerome Hines) along with others of singers previously included (Eleanor Steber, Lauritz Melchior, Rise Stevens), brings to thirty the number of volumes in circulation.

As the foregoing names suggest, the Firestone vocal roster was an impressive one. From an era far richer than our own in commanding voices, many of the finest are on parade here. Since the programs also illuminate a corner of television history (in particular, some of the earliest squabbles in the skittish relationship between network television and high culture), voice addicts and media students alike will find them difficult to ignore. The Voice of Firestone made its debut on radio in 1928, and remained in its original prime-time slot (Monday evening, 8:30) on NBC until 1954, when it moved to ABC. ABC discontinued the show five years later, but reinstated it for the 1962-63 season, then dropped it for good. It was network radio’s first musical program, achieved the first radio-television simulcast, and by the 1950s was the oldest coast-to-coast program of any type.