Italian

Recorded in Milan, Naples, Rome and the diaspora, 1890s–1940s

These sides gather Italian opera and song across the years 1901 to 1924. Almost all fall safely before 1923; a single side—the 1924 Traviata duet—sits in the later gray band. Enrico Caruso, the Neapolitan tenor whose own sides here run from 1901 to 1921, stands at the center of the set.

Verdi returns again and again: Caruso in ‘La donna è mobile’ and the romanza from Un ballo in maschera, the Miserere from Il trovatore with Frances Alda and the Metropolitan Opera Chorus, and the 1924 ‘Un dì felice’ with Amelita Galli-Curci and Tito Schipa. Mascagni’s Siciliana from Cavalleria rusticana appears more than once; Flotow’s Martha is heard in ensemble with Alda, Jacoby, Caruso and Marcel Journet; Gounod’s Faust prison scene brings Farrar, Caruso and Journet together.

Around them stand Titta Ruffo in Leoncavallo’s Zazà and a Mozart serenade, Giovanni Martinelli in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, Beniamino Gigli in Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys, Antonio Scotti in Bizet and Mozart, and Pasquale Amato in Mascagni and Ponchielli. Song and lighter pieces keep company with the arias—Nutile’s ‘Mamma mia che vo’ sapè,’ Tosti settings, a tarantella, Rotoli’s ‘Mia sposa sarà la mia bandiera,’ and a 1919 serenata carrying Caruso’s own lyric.