Curiosity Shop

This is the page where I feature curiosities.

At last! Florence Foster Jenkins. Memories of my (college) boyhood days: Budding opera mavens gathering around the stereo with liquid fortification, listening to the recording of Florence Foster Jenkins and howling along with great pleasure. The woman was as much an institution as Maria Callas—just as campy, and much more fun. And judging from what has been written about her, Jenkins must have had both a generous heart and a great sense of conviviality. She shared her inherited wealth and her musical endeavors with friends old and new. After a taxicab crash in 1943, the coloratura found she could sing “a higher F than ever before” and instead of suing the cab company, sent the driver a box of expensive cigars. Francis Robinson, Assistant Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in the 1950s, writes:

Few artists ever gave such analloyed pleasure as Florence Foster Jenkins, yet this extraordinary soprano had the wisdom not to overdo a good thing.

She emphatically declined to appear in New York oftener than once a year. . . For years her annual recital at the Ritz-Carlton was a private ceremonial for the select few. . . Then the word began to get around. Tickets became harder to come by than for a World Series. Finally, on the evening of October 25, 1944, Madame Jenkins took the big step. Forsaking the brocade atmosphere of a fashionable hotel ballroom, she braved Carnegie Hall [which] was sold out weeks in advance. [She died a month later, full of years, at age 76.]

She broke into print in 1912 as chairman of the Euterpe Club’s tableaux vivants. She was also glad to foot the bill for the annual spree of her Verdi Club. . . All this gave free rein to her flair for costume design, a faculty which was to prove almost as startling as her vocal flights. No Jenkins recital was accompanied by less than three changes. In “Angel of Inspiration” [pictured] a very substantial and matronly apparition, all wings and tinsel and tulle, made its way through potted palms to the curve of the grand piano.

So, my dear adventurers, click the play button to enjoy this phenomenon of the concert stage.

RealAudio 3.0 format

Robert Merrill meets Rudy Vallée in this popular recording. This was a Song Hits magazine “Song of the Month”, though the label doesn’t say what month. This campy recording of the “Whiffenpoof Song (Ba-Ba-Ba)” by Todd Galloway was revised by Rudy Vallée and features Robert Merrill and Male Chorus.

RealAudio 3.0 format

This is not a recording but rather an “I wonder” item. Over the years I’ve seen some wonderful costume and set design—and some that was mundane or rickety or just plain weird. The photo here is of Lawrence Tibbett. And what role do you think he’s playing? Robin Hood? Nope. Iago in Verdi’s Otello. Sometimes I wonder what goes on in the mind of a designer who concocts a get-up like this.

The Ponzillo Sisters — As mentioned in my sketch of Rosa Ponselle, she began her career in vaudeville. Here is a recording (in poor condition) of Rosa and her sister Carmela (contralto) singing “Where My Caravan Has Rested”.

Enrico Caruso, basso... You’ve probably heard that old story about the Met performing Bohème in Philadelphia when the bass, Andrés de Segurola, lost his voice in the last act. As his famous “Coat” aria approached, he whispered his dilemma to Caruso, who told him to mouth the words... then Caruso sang the aria. Well, here is a recording I came across of Caruso singing that aria. It was released only to a few friends, then Caruso ordered the master destroyed. When asked why, he replied, “I don’t want to spoil the bass business.”

A Modern Recording!
Okay. This one is not a curiosity, but I thought since I have a sample of the young Robert Merrill, I would give an example of an older Merrill. Gabriella Tucci (b. 1929), Franco Corelli (pictured, 1921-2003) and Robert Merrill (1919-2004) recorded Il Trovatore, from whence cometh this trio (end of Act I), under the direction of Thomas Schippers in 1964 (Angel CL-3653, CDMB-63640, EMI CMS7 63640-2). The recording also featured Giulietta Simionato as a delicious Azucena. This is not generally listed by reviewers as one of the best recordings of Trovatore. Tough. I like it. I have treasured this screamfest over the years. The somewhat strangulated sounding Corelli, occasionally screaming Tucci and golden-voiced but sometimes musically clueless Merrill combine to give a generally exciting reading of the work.

Corelli and Merrill are well known; Tucci is less well-known, possibly because her voice (according to some observers) was ruined by trying to sing repertory that was not suited to her. It is unfortunate that many sopranos meet this end. In the modern amphitheater-sized opera houses there is little call for the elegantly light-weight sopranos; we want ’em big and beefy (at least in voice). According to Martin Bernheimer, Tucci was “an uneven singer, but her best performances were notable for communicative warmth, taste and lustrous tone. A poignant actress, she was especially effective in the final acts of Otello and La traviata.”

Alessandro Moreschi , “the last castrato”, was born in Montecompatrio, Rome in 1858. Twelve years later, in 1870, the Italian armies ended the temporal sovereignty of the Church, and the production of castrati became officially illegal. Consequently when Moreschi was ready to begin his vocal training, it would have been extremely difficult to find instructors in the use of a kind of voice which was already nearly extinct. Nevertheless Moreschi began his education in 1871 at the Scuola di San Salvatore in Lauro. Subsequently he became a pupil of Gaetano Capocci, an organist and composer of church music. In 1883, at the age of 25, he entered the Choir of the Capella Sistina. He became soloist with the Choir and sang in the execution of the Mass. He was made conductor of the Choir in 1898.

In addition to his services at the Vatican, Moreschi sang in Universities, drawing-rooms and clubs. According to the Dizinario Universale dei Musicisti, Moreschi, who possessed “a voice of exceptional beauty, received the title l’angelo di Roma. ” He was noted for his singing of the Seraph in Beethoven’s early oratorio, Christ on the Mount of Olives, and he appeared with great success at the Beethoven Commemoration in Lyon, France. He sang at the Pantheon at the funeral of two Italian kings, and retired from the Sistine Chapel Choir in 1913, after having sung there for thirty years. (notes from John Wolfson)

Roman Catholic tradition, following the exhortation of St. Paul that women remain silent in church, dictated that only males read, preach or sing in church. Thus the choir was made up exclusively of men and boys. As music blossomed into polyphony, it became more difficult for the boys to hold their own with the men’s voices (and the boys were probably unruly). The solution was found in the use of castrati, males who were castrated around age 10 so that as adults, they possessed a boy’s high voice supported by the power of an adult body. The powerful Roman Church pretty much dictated the same “males only” rule for the stage, so the castrati branched out to become very successful on the operatic stage of the 17th and 18th centuries. The most famous of the castrati was Farinelli (Carlo Broschi) who sang with great agility and power, and who reportedly had a range that reached the high F (above the soprano staff). Eventually, the castrati fell from their position as virtual gods, but their vocal legacy remains even today among singers in the bel canto tradition.

Moreschi was probably a pretty good singer, but he was no Farinelli. And this recording was made late in his career using a process that was difficult at best. I present this recording as a curiosity not only because it is a sample of a voice type no longer heard, but also because it illustrates a style of singing no longer practiced. The wild scoops into pitch were common practice in this period. Remnants of this scooping can be found today in the “sob” of some tenors and what I call the “chest attack” employed for dramatic effect by some female singers.

Mado Robin, “Stratospheric Coloratura,” was born in France in 1918. She studied singing in Italy and gave her first recital in Paris in 1942. Her career in the U.S. began and ended at the San Francisco Opera in September, 1954. Robin wanted to sing her usual stratospheric interpolations, but the conductor, Fausto Cleva, resisted heartily. Whether her performance was trashy or campy or artistic is a matter of personal taste, I suppose. But it is a curious voice, a phenomenal voice. Harold Rosenthal notes in his Oxford Dictionary of Opera that Robin’s top register contained what was supposed to have been the highest tone ever emitted by a singer—C above high C. According to John Ardoin, former music editor of the Dallas Morning News, “these phenomenal top notes were neither artificial extensions or freak sounds but rather sustained tones, bright and round and produced with seeming ease.” Mado Robin died of leukemia in 1960.

When I was in college, the Robin recordings were the object of a strange mix of derision and admiration. See what you think.