The Complete Blanche Marchesi
and Selected Recordings by Pupils of Mathilde Marchesi

52079-2 (2 CDs)  | $ 42.00
VOCAL

 

The Complete Blanche Marchesi
This set features the complete known recordings of French mezzo-soprano Blanche Marchesi (1863–1940), the daughter and pupil of legendary vocal instructor Mathilde (née Graumann) Marchesi (1821–1913). Mathilde was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and after a short, unsuccessful career as a performer, she transitioned to teaching voice in 1849, and never looked back. Her teaching career took her from Cologne to Vienna, and ultimately to Paris, where in 1881 she established her own school and enjoyed a long and illustrious career as vocal instructor to many of the greatest singers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of her most famous pupils include Nellie Melba, Emma Calvé, Frances Alda, Selma Kurz, and Emma Eames.

In addition to the complete Blanche Marchesi, this two-CD set features other rare recordings of pupils of Mathilde Marchesi, most being released here for the first time. Included are performances by American sopranos Elizabeth Parkina, Esther Palliser, and Frances Saville, Australian contralto Ada Crossley, and American lyric coloratura soprano Suzanne Adams.

CD 1 (81:41)

All recordings are transferred at A = 440hz except where noted.

Blanche Marchesi (1863–1940)

THE GRAMOPHONE COMPANY, BERLIN, FEBRUARY 1906

Bruno Seidler-Winkler, piano
1.Bist du bei mir (Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, arranged by J. S. Bach BWV 508)3:00
2.Im Mai (Goldschmidt)3:00
3.Eiapopeia (German folk song)2:30

THE GRAMOPHONE COMPANY, BERLIN, FEBRUARY 1906

orchestra conducted by Bruno Seidler-Winkler
4.CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA: Voi lo sapete (Mascagni)3:17
5.TOSCA: Vissi d’arte (Puccini)3:08
6.L’été (Chaminade)3:17
7.Se saran rose (Arditi)3:13

COLUMBIA PHONOGRAPH COMPANY, LONDON, 4 JANUARY 1912

with unidentified pianist
8.Zauberlied (Magic Song) (Meyer-Hellmund)2:30

PRIVATE TEST RECORDINGS MADE BY WILL DAY, LTD, LONDON, 1934

with unidentified pianist
recorded on ten-inch flexible cardboard discs
9.Le violette (A. Scarlatti)2:44
10.Qual farfalletta amante (A. Scarlatti)1:55
(the recording is incomplete, beginning during the A section.)

THE GRAMOPHONE COMPANY, LONDON, 1936–1937

11.O death, rock me asleep (anonymous, formerly attributed to Queen Anne Boleyn; arranged by Arnold Dolmetch)3:24
 Robert Ainsworth, piano
12.DIDO AND AENEAS: Thy hand, Belinda ... When I am laid in earth (Purcell)3:35
 Agnes Bedford, piano
13.DIDO AND AENEAS: Thy hand, Belinda ... When I am laid in earth (Purcell)3:25
 Agnes Bedford, piano
14.Amuri, Amuri [Sicilian Cart Driver’s Song] (traditional; arranged by Geni Sadero)2:39
 Agnes Bedford, piano
15.Maria Wiegenlied (Reger)1:31
 Robert Ainsworth, piano
16.Sne (Snow) (Sigurd Lie)1:52
 Robert Ainsworth, piano
17.Nun wander, Maria No. 3 from SPANISCHES LIEDERBUCH, GEISTLICHE LIEDER (Wolf)2:37
 Agnes Bedford, piano
18.La lettre (Ernest Moret)1:47
 Agnes Bedford, piano
19.HERCULES: My father ... Peaceful rest (Handel)4:15
 Agnes Bedford, piano

Esther Palliser (1868–?)

THE GRAMOPHONE COMPANY, LONDON, JULY, SEPTEMBER, AND NOVEMBER 1902

Landon Ronald, piano
transferred at old Philharmonic tuning A = 452hz
20.XERXES: Ombra mai fu (Handel)2:46
21.Bolero (Saint-Saëns)2:34
 with May Walters Palliser
22.The sweetest flower that blows (Hawley)2:14
23.Mighty lak’ a rose (Nevin)1:25
24.Spring (Henchel)2:53
25.La folletta (Marchesi)2:24

Suzanne Adams (1872–1953)

THE GRAMOPHONE COMPANY, LONDON, JULY 1902

Landon Ronald, piano
transferred at old Philharmonic tuning A = 452hz
26.FAUST: Ah! Je ris de me voir si belle [Jewel Song] (Gounod)3:14
27.ROMÉO ET JULIETTE: Je veux vivre (Gounod)2:52
28.Coquette (Stern)2:36
29.Home, sweet home (Bishop)2:22
30.Home, sweet home (Bishop)2:26
Note: This alternative take was issued in 1905 on black label pressings which bear the same matrix number without a suffix.
Languages:
Tracks 1–3, 15, and 17 in German
Tracks 1–3, 15, and 17 in German
Tracks 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 20, and 25 in Italian
Tracks 6, 18, 21, and 26–28 in French
Tracks 8, 11–13, 19, 22–24, 29 and 30 in English
Track 14 in Sicilian
Track 16 in Norwegian

CD 2 (80:46)

All recordings are transferred at A = 440hz except where noted.

Suzanne Adams (1872–1953) (continued)

THE GRAMOPHONE COMPANY, LONDON, EARLY JULY 1902

Landon Ronald, piano
transferred at old Philharmonic tuning A = 452hz
1.Printemps nouveau (Vidal)1:38

Frances Saville (1865–1935)

THE GRAMOPHONE COMPANY, VIENNA, APRIL 1902

unidentified pianist
transferred at Viennese pitch A = 447hz
2.LOHENGRIN: Euch Luften, die mein Klagen (Wagner)3:01
3.MARTHA: Warum blühst Du, o Rose, im Garten allein? (Flotow)2:37
4.MANON: Restons ici ... Voyons Manon, plus de chimères (So bleib’ ich hier ... So zeig’, Manon, den ernsten Willen) (Massenet)3:15
5.MANON: Obéissons, quand leurs voix appelle (Folget dem Ruf, so lieblich zu hören) [Gavotte] (Massenet)2:53
6.LES CONTES D’HOFFMANN: Les oiseaux dans la charmille (Phöbus stolz im Sonnenwagen) (Offenbach)2:29
7.LES CONTES D’HOFFMANN: C’est une chanson d’amour qui s’envole (Hörst du es tönen) (Offenbach)2:22
8.Maman, dites-moi (Old French Air)2:38
9.Ninon (Tosti)2:40
10.Heidenröslein D.257 (Schubert)1:59
11.Wiegenlied, Op. 49, No. 4 (Brahms)2:00
12.Ich hätte nicht daran gedacht (Meyer-Helmund)1:57
13.Morgen send’ ich dir die Veilchen (Meyer-Helmund)3:06

Elizabeth Parkina (ca. 1878–1922)

THE GRAMOPHONE COMPANY, LONDON, 1904 AND 1906

Landon Ronald, piano
14.Coming through the rye (traditional)2:22
15.La villanelle (dell’Acqua)3:16
16.Should he upbraid (Bishop)2:40
17.Killarney (Balfe)3:07
18.Ouvre tes yeux bleus (Massenet)2:07
19.The little grey linnet (Willeby)2:28
20.When you speak to me (d’Hardelot)2:22
21.I know a lovely garden (d’Hardelot)2:09
22.Mattinata (’Tis the day) (Leoncavallo)2:02
23.La serenata (Tosti)2:28
24.Spring (Tosti)2:22
25.La fée aux chansons (Bemberg)3:31

Ada Crossley (1871–1929)

VICTOR TALKING MACHINE COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, 30 APRIL 1903

Christopher H. H. Booth, piano
26.Caro mio ben (Giordani)3:06
27.Four-leaf clover (Willeby)2:12
28.Paysage (Hahn)2:07
29.New Year’s Song (Mallinson)1:44

PATHÉ, LONDON, 1905

unidentified pianist
transferred at old Philharmonic tuning A = 452hz
issued on two-minute cylinder and later on 29cm etched-label disc
30.Out on the rocks (Sainton-Dolby)2:14

PATHÉ, LONDON, 1906

unidentified pianist
transferred at old Philharmonic tuning A = 452hz
issued only on 29cm etched-label disc
31.The gleaner’s slumber song (Walthew)3:36

PATHÉ, LONDON, 1906

accompaniment by the Band of H. M. Scots Guards
transferred at British band pitch A=452
issued on 29cm etched-label disc
32.PAULUS: But the Lord is mindful of his own (Mendelssohn)2:14
Languages:
Tracks 1, 8, 9, 15, 18, 25, and 28 in French
Tracks 2–7, 10–13 in German
Tracks 14, 16, 17, 19–22, 24, 27, and 29–32 in English
Tracks 23 and 26 in Italian

 

Producers: Ward Marston and Scott Kessler

Audio Conservation: Ward Marston and J. Richard Harris

Photos: Gregor Benko, Boston Public Library Philip Hale Photograph Collection, Bill Ecker/Harmonie Autographs, Rudi van den Bulck/Charles Mintzer Collection, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (Simon Drake, curator), Nestor H. Masckauchan/Tamino Autographs, Peter van der Waal

Booklet Coordinator: Mark S. Stehle

Booklet Design: Takeshi Takahashi

Booklet Essay: Michael Aspinall

Marston would like to thank Jeffrey Miller and Richard L. Slade for their generous sponsorship which helped make this project a reality. Marston would also like to thank the following sponsors for their generous contributions:
Joseph A. Bartush, Cary Frumess, Dennis R. Hardwick, and Mauro Sarnelli.

Marston would like to thank Gregor Benko and Will Crutchfield for their editorial assistance.

Marston would like to thank Christian Zwarg for providing important discographic information and sharing his research on pitching.

Marston would like to thank the following for making recordings available for the production of this set: Gregor Benko and Jeffrey Miller

Marston would like to thank Christian Zwarg for providing audio restorations of CD 1, tracks 26–30, and CD 2, track 1.

Marston would like to thank Simon Drake, curator, the National Sound and Film Archive of Australia, for providing a raw transfer of CD 1, track 31.

Marston would like to thank Gesellschaft für Historische Tonträger (GHT), Sammlung Alfred Seiser, Wien, for providing a raw transfer of CD 2, track 7.

Marston would like to thank Mark Bailey, Director of the Yale Collection of Historical Sound Recordings, for providing raw transfers of CD 2, tracks 6, 8, and 10–12.

Marston would like to thank Axel Weggen and Karsten Lehl for providing raw transfers of CD 2, tracks 2–5.

Marston would like to thank Larry Lustig for providing raw transfers of CD 2, tracks 16 and 25.

Marston would like to thank Paul Steinson for providing a raw transfer of CD 2, track 31.

Marston is grateful to the Estate of John Stratton (Stephen Clarke, Executor) for its continuing support.

Blanche Marchesi and the Marchesi School

by Michael Aspinall, ©2024

“Modest voices can triumph if character does support natural gifts”

–Manuel Garcia II

Mathilde

Lisette Sophie Jeannette Mathilde Graumann was born in Frankfurt on 24 March 1821 into a highly respectable bourgeois family enjoying distinguished ramifications in Germany and France. Of markedly individual character even as a girl, Mathilde Graumann refused ever to speak German, saying that it hurt her throat and made her hoarse! In her childhood Mathilde heard Jenny Lind and Pauline Viardot Garcia from her grandmother’s box at the opera. Her first singing teacher was Felice Ronconi, who disappointed her and she devoted herself once more to her first love, the pianoforte. In her teens she was already teaching music, and at sixteen she visited London, where she heard opera sung in Italian for the first time. When her father lost his fortune, Mathilde went to stay with aunts in Vienna, where she continued her musical studies with financial help from her sister. Pauline Viardot Garcia urged her to go to Paris to study with her brother, Manuel Garcia II. Mathilde returned to Frankfurt, and began gathering together enough money for these studies. She made her concert debut in Frankfurt in August 1844, then studied for a while with Felix Mendelssohn, a family friend, who prepared her for three appearances at the Rhine Festival at Düsseldorf in May 1845. In October of that year she reached her goal, Paris, where Garcia accepted her but made her start all over again from the beginning. Such was her progress that when Garcia broke his arm in a riding accident in 1847 he entrusted Fräulein Graumann with teaching several of his pupils. He was delighted with the results: “You were born to teach!”

The revolutionary upheavals of 1848 caused Garcia to transfer his school to London, where Mathilde followed him in 1849. She was frequently asked to sing in private concerts; her parents had made her promise never to disgrace the family by singing in the wicked theater!

Salvatore

Salvatore De Castrone della Rajata was born in Palermo on 15 January 1822. After studying music and singing with Pietro Raimondi in Palermo and Francesco Lamperti in Milan, he became involved in the uprisings of 1848 and hurriedly departed for New York, where he sang Don Carlo in Verdi’s Ernani. Adopting the nom de théâtre, Marchesi, he continued his vocal studies with Garcia in London from 1850. The most authoritative Victorian music critic, Henry Fothergill Chorley, praised Marchesi’s first London appearance, at St. Martin’s Hall in one of Mr. Willy’s Orchestral Concerts (The Athenaeum, No. 1166, 2 March 1850, p.242):

Though obviously under the spell of that formidable thing “a first appearance”, Signor Marchesi impressed the public most favourably. His voice is baritone in quality, bass in extent, of sweet and pleasing timbre, sufficiently powerful, capable of sentimental expression, as was shown in the Count’s Scena from ‘Le Nozze’, and of agility and humour in the ‘Barbiere’ duett, which was given with great spirit, especially on its repetition. A début more successful and in every respect promising better things for stage or concert room we do not recollect.

Marchesi’s Rosina in the duet was Miss Lucombe, who would later marry the great tenor Sims Reeves.

By a charming coincidence, Chorley’s first notice of the singing of Mdlle. Graumann describes her Benefit Concert in this same number of The Athenaeum:

[Mdlle. Graumann] has made good progress since last season, and to her agreeable mezzo-soprano voice has added good style and versatility, not merely in the music, but also in the languages sung (and well sung) by her. She was assisted by MM. Benedict, Piatti …. and by Signor Marchesi.

In issue No. 1168, 16 March 1850, Mr. Chorley enlarges upon Salvatore Marchesi’s singing at another Willy Concert:

On [Signor Marchesi] we dwell, not merely because he is a stranger and, we are told, but a beginner (under the guidance, we perceive, of M. Garcia), but because there already needs little to make him the most available and the most interesting concert-bass in the market. In spite of some timidity, Signor Marchesi’s vocal method and thorough firmness in his music deserve as much praise as his voice, which is eminently what the Italians call simpatica.

We find the two singers appearing together again in Mr. Aguilar’s Concert, reviewed in No. 1174, 27 April 1850:

….Mdlle. Graumann, who is also rising and will rise higher among the mezzi-soprani in right of a refinement and piquancy rare among German ladies…and Signor Marchesi, who also is so rapidly coming forward that at no distant period he must take a foremost place among the bassi capable of singing all ‘sorts and conditions’ of music.

At the end of the 1850 London season Mdlle. Graumann went to sing concerts in Weimar, where Liszt would often ask her to sing to his students, accompanying her at the piano. In March 1851 Chorley praised Salvatore Marchesi’s singing of the bass solo in the first performance in England of a major work of Bach, the “Credo” from the Mass in B minor, conducted by John Hullah. During this season the first performance in England of Mendelssohn’s chamber opera Son and Stranger was given at Mdlle. Graumann’s house, in the English translation by Mr. Chorley: the singers included not only Mathilde and Salvatore, but also Manuel Garcia himself. Salvatore travelled to Frankfurt to ask Mathilde’s mother for the young lady’s hand in marriage, and the two singers were married on 19 April 1852 at Heddesheim. After a concert season the couple gave in Berlin in the autumn of 1852, Mathilde was called upon to substitute for an ailing prima donna as Rosina in Il barbiere in Bremen—her stage debut—but her new husband forbade her ever to tread the stage again! In 1853 Salvatore and Mathilde Marchesi spent the Grand Season in London, and on the occasion of their re-appearances in concert, Mr. Chorley was again enthusiastic, particularly when they “gave with great point and finish one of Handel’s Chamber Duetts, cleverly scored by Herr Hiller”—one of thirty-one pieces on the program of Julius Benedict’s “Monster Concert.” In 1864 Chorley praised their “Historical Concert” of old Italian composers, accompanied at the piano by Mlle. Marie Wieck (Clara Schumann’s sister-in-law); the violinist Wieniawski played the Bach “Chaconne!”

The growth of a great school

From 1854 to 1861 the Marchesis taught at the Vienna Conservatoire, Mathilde taking the ladies, Salvatore the gentlemen. Mathilde got off to a flying start: in her first year she began to teach three-star sopranos, Antonietta Fricci, Gabrielle Krauss, and Ilma di Murska, who helped to establish their teacher’s fame. Mathilde would later describe the dramatic soprano Gabrielle Krauss as her greatest pupil. In 1856 Liszt conducted a Mozart centenary concert in Vienna including the second act of Don Giovanni, and when the Donna Elvira proved unavailable, he rushed round to the Marchesis’ house to drag Mathilde from her sickbed and save the day. Soon afterwards Salvatore and Mathilde lost their two sons, Otto and Hugo, and in 1861 Rossini offered to find Mathilde a position among the staff of the Paris Conservatoire, so the family left for France; at that time there were three daughters: Thérèse, Stella, and Clara. Mathilde took twelve pupils with her from Vienna to Paris, including Ilma di Murska.

A few days after the Marchesis arrived in Paris their baby daughter Clara died, and Mathilde had no alternative but to throw herself into her work. Despite Rossini’s influence, Daniel Auber would not admit Mathilde to the staff of the Conservatoire because he was averse to the use of the Italian language! The Marchesis subsisted on private lessons and occasional public performances, including a successful tour of England, Scotland and Ireland with a concert at Court for Queen Victoria.

Blanche

Either in February or on 4 April 1863 (sources differ) Mathilde gave birth to her last child, Blanche Marchesi (Stella died in 1880). In September 1865 Ferdinand Hiller, Director of the Conservatoire of Cologne, offered Mathilde a teaching post there and the family reluctantly left Paris, then the center of European culture, for Cologne—a provincial German town that struck Marchesi as “indescribably sad and dull.” In 1868 Mathilde returned to the Vienna Conservatoire, where she remained for ten years, Salvatore joining her there in 1869. Between 1878 and 1881 Mathilde taught privately in Vienna, and finally, from 1881 to her retirement in 1910, she taught at her home in Paris. Over her teaching career Mathilde Marchesi produced between fifty and sixty international star singers—mostly sopranos.

The concert career of
Blanche Marchesi

Mathilde quickly became known in Paris for the excellence of her musical “At Homes,” showcases for her most presentable students, and at the very first of these, a matinée musicale on 19 December 1881, her eighteen-year-old daughter Blanche made her first public appearance, singing Gounod’s song “À une jeune fille” accompanied at the piano by the composer. This was repeated at a charity concert the next day, in which Mathilde’s young pupils were joined by Gabrielle Krauss and Jean-Baptiste Faure, resulting in a success to which Mathilde Marchesi would later attribute her whole-hearted acceptance by Parisian musical and intellectual society. When Blanche was called upon to sing at Pauline Viardot Garcia’s house, the great singer wrote to Mathilde, “Blanche is a darling. She sang two of my songs with marvelous taste and expression.” At the age of twenty Blanche fell in love with Baron Alexander Popper de Podhragy, whom she was finally able to marry in 1885. The couple had three sons, whose properties were expropriated by the Nazis, but they all survived. Blanche retired from professional singing upon her marriage, but she left her husband in 1892, marrying Baron André Anzon-Caccamisi in 1894. She made a second “professional debut” in Berlin, Brussels, and Paris in 1895, then came her triumphant London debut recital at the Small Queen’s Hall on 19 June 1896. She seems to have relished her favorable reception by the critics, including Robert Hichens, later to become a popular novelist. On 10 November 1896, Henry Haynie wrote in the Daily Telegraph that she was: “one of the most perfect singers now living. Her voice is extremely sweet and flexible. She sings with taste and expression, her countenance is remarkably pleasing, and she acts with vivacity.” She established her home in England. In 1909 the singer and teacher Anna Schoen-René wrote of her: “She has taken the entire musical world as her field and has become as well identified with the songs of Germany as she has with those of France, Italy, or England.”

Although it seems tactless of her to have sung “Depuis le jour” from Louise in a Court concert before the Kaiser, she was to enjoy some success as a concert singer in Germany, and also in France, but England was her artistic home. She made two concert tours in America, the first beginning in New York in January 1899. A review by Richard Aldrich that appeared in the New York Times on 4 December 1909 shows this great critic struggling to analyze her work fairly:

Mme. Blanche Marchesi, who bears a name doubly honorable and honored in the realm of vocal art, gave a concert last evening in Mendelssohn Hall that had twice been postponed. Her listeners were few, but Mme. Marchesi’s singing is hardly for the general public; it is for a public that can appreciate the things she can do and is equally willing to forego the things she cannot do. Chief among the latter is the production of a beautiful tone. Mme Marchesi’s voice is not merely unbeautiful, it is for the most part positively ugly, with a certain streak of commonness in some of its tones. Nevertheless, she is in many respects a consummate artist. What she can do in the way of interpretation, characterizing and expressing the mood and the spirit of a song is often most admirable. There is likewise much that is admirable in her vocal art, in her phrasing, the management of the breath and even in the scales and the trill.

She was famous for the wide-ranging scope of her concert repertoire, in many languages. As soloist with the Royal Philharmonic Society, conducted by Sir Frederic Cowen, on 9 June 1901 she sang “Divinités du Styx” from Gluck’s Alceste and “Leise, leise” from Weber’s Der Freischütz. On 13 March 1907 she warbled “Rossignols amoureux” from Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie.

On Tuesday, 3 December 1907, at the Queen’s Hall, London, with the New Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Beecham, she sang Senta’s ballad from The Flying Dutchman, the soprano solo in Mahler’s 4th Symphony, “Wiegenlied” by Richard Strauss and Schubert’s “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen” (both with the orchestra), the Song Cycle “Songs of the Wind” by Marie Horne, the “Gipsy Song” from Holbrook’s Varenka, “Voci di primavera” by Johann Strauss II, and ending with Isolde’s “Liebestod.”

She sang a considerable amount of “Ancient music,” notably with ensembles directed by Arnold Dolmetsch, and at one of these concerts a young lady ventured timorously onto the stage to sing Purcell’s “When I am laid in earth.” We wonder how she got through it, for a formidable figure in the front row (it was Blanche Marchesi) hissed in a sonorous stage whisper: “She’s singing MY song!”

Opera

After conducting her in Leonore’s aria from Fidelio at a Hallé concert in Manchester, Hans Richter suggested that she should sing Wagnerian opera: “It is just such singers as you that Wagner desired and wished for. He wanted classic style and perfect vocal method…” Taking his words to heart Blanche made her operatic debut as the Walküre Brünnhilde in Prague in 1900, but she never managed the great operatic career that her birthright promised; Covent Garden seemed reluctant to engage her, and though she sang there in 1902 and 1903, this was in autumn seasons of opera in English by the Moody-Manners opera company. In these London seasons Blanche sang in Faust, Cavalleria rusticana, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde, and Il trovatore; on tour with the company she added La Gioconda.

The bitterness of success

When Queen Victoria died in 1901, Blanche learned from the Daily Telegraph that the Queen “had loved a few singers, above all, Albani, Jenny Lind, Calvé, and Blanche Marchesi.”

In his book Mi contra fa (London, The Porcupine Press, 1947) Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, whose critical writings are the veriest scourge of mediocrity, dedicates an entire chapter to Blanche Marchesi: “her death in 1941 [sic] was a great grief, and an irreparable loss to all who knew, loved and admired a supremely gifted and lovable personality, who was at one and the same time, the greatest of great ladies and great artists.” Touching on the delicate question of whether Blanche Marchesi really had any voice, Sorabji goes on:

Blanche Marchesi HAD a voice, a very beautiful and remarkable one, even if it lacked the extreme physical beauty of those of Melba or Calvé. It was an instrument of outstandingly flexible versatility, enabling her to cope superbly with an enormous range of vocal composition, from Brahms and Strauss and the German Lieder, to Debussy and the modern Frenchmen, from Wagner to Weckerlin, Padre Martini and the old Italian Masters. In all these immensely disparate and diversified fields she was utterly consummate, so consummate that even in her latter years, when well over seventy, her singing of these things gave one an electric thrill of intense pleasure, not only unequalled but not approached by that of other singers in their prime.

Blanche Marchesi rode serenely over all disappointments, slights and malice, giving her occasional recitals to her devout and faithful admirers; even as on those incomparably moving occasions, when crippled by arthritis and well over her seventieth year, she had to sing all the while sitting…or later still, on her seventy-fifth birthday in the Wigmore Hall, – and thrilled us as only she could with an artistry, a penetrating profundity and intensity of artistic insight and an interpretative force which triumphed over all physical disabilities, and gave us once again an experience the like of which no one living is in the least likely ever to repeat.

Before she took up singing she was a fine violinist; she was also a fine and critical conoisseur of painting…She wrote plays and stories to amuse herself, and was a woman of vivid and powerful intelligence in all she undertook. And what dignity, what an air, what a manner!

An article by George Cecil on Blanche’s private collection of art appeared in The Connoisseur in 1912.

“Poor Blanche”

Melba and Blanche Marchesi did not get on too well together. Both had very strong personalities, and, as so often happens, the personalities clashed. Blanche, but for one thing, would have been her mother’s greatest pupil…. But alas! Nature did not endow her with a voice to match her talents…. Melba, with her more limited musical nature, and her rudimentary sense of drama, had that wonderful, God-given voice, and as she and Blanche Marchesi were conscious of their own limitations, I am afraid that neither singer was sparing in her criticisms of the other…. Melba always regretted in that kindly way in which singers speak of each other, that ‘poor Blanche’ hadn’t the voice to enable her to sing the rôles she would have liked to undertake…. Marchesi was at one time rather inclined to put down to the machinations of Melba the fact that she did not find a home at Covent Garden, but I think without justification.

Percy Colson, Melba,
Grayson & Grayson, London 1932

It must be said for Blanche Marchesi that she distinguished between Melba the woman, whom she detested, and Melba the singer, whom she admired without stint.

John Hetherington, Melba,
Faber & Faber, London 1967

Mr. Hetherington also reports that after Melba’s death Marchesi told a pupil, with deadly emphasis: “She’s the worst woman I ever knew. She came between me and my family.” In the Sunday Referee in 1936 Marchesi is reported as saying: “Melba’s jealousy ruined many lives. Mine was among them. She was my mother’s favorite pupil, and even she, most dear to me, Melba turned against me.” Melba was still alive (and kicking) in 1923 when “Poor Blanche” published her fascinating and unintentionally revealing autobiography Singer’s Pilgrimage. How significant that Marchesi mentions Melba more than any other singer!

…she was an ardent student, and also stepped straight from the class-room to the stage of the Brussels Royal Opera, keeping for my mother lifelong feelings of deepest respect and loving gratitude. Melba’s friendship for my mother was one of her great joys; it made up for the forgetful hearts of many others.

The regrettable feud between two great women was no secret at the time, as we may see from a letter quoted in the 1991 catalogue of Christie’s London sale of the Marchesi Archive. Page twenty-four of the catalogue quotes a letter to Blanche from the painter Charles Shannon about his portrait of her; Melba had come to his studio mistaking him for the society artist Sir James Shannon. “The news that one of the pictures was of Blanche was received with stony silence but—the picture is unharmed”!

When Singer’s Pilgrimage was published in America in 1923 Lawrence Gilman wrote a scathingly ironic review for The North American Review, mocking the vein of paranoia that runs throughout the work. Cruelly, he declares: “She is remembered as a singer of wide and diversified culture, familiar with the best music, and obstinately choosing to sing it.”

Considering Marchesi’s anomalous position as an intellectual among singers, enjoying the respect and love of an educated audience restricted to true music lovers, it is easy to imagine her feelings when she would read of Melba’s triumphs at Covent Garden. She even began to believe that Melba had ordered the destruction of the masters of the records she made in Berlin for G&T in 1906, and on page 150 of Singer’s Pilgrimage she guardedly mentions this:

Gramophone records which had been made were destroyed in the factories by command. Among them there were really remarkable ones that were the outcome of one single trial made for “His Master’s Voice” in Berlin….

Unfortunately, the truth is that the records were published regularly but did not sell well, possibly because Marchesi did not sing frequently in Germany. The policy of the Gramophone Company in 1906 was to delete any record that sold fewer than 200 copies in a year, and destroy the metal masters. Sorabji, one supposes under the influence of Marchesi’s gossip, firmly believed in Melba’s responsibility, but the sad truth is that it is very unlikely that Melba ever knew or cared that “poor Blanche” had made gramophone records. We now know that Blanche recorded for Columbia in 1912, but none were published, and it seems doubtful that Melba would have had any influence with Columbia’s management to destroy these masters as well.

The records of
Blanche Marchesi

Nothing is easier to understand than the passionate devotion she inspired in her pupils and in those who loved and appreciated her.

Sorabji

Marchesi is known to have made at least three series of recordings: seven sides in 1906 for G&T in Berlin; a group of unpublished sides for English Columbia in 1912, from which only one has survived; and her private electrical recordings made for HMV in 1936 and 1937. We are also able to add two unique private acetate recordings from 1934 to her discography.

The Marchesi records might not suit all tastes, though even the very last show an outstanding musical personality and an accomplished technician. On the whole, I find “Bist du bei mir” from the 1906 group and “O death, rock me asleep” from the electrics the most beautifully sung and the best introductions to her art, though the “Sicilian cart-driver’s song” exerts a weirdly unforgettable tug on the heartstrings, and the recitative and aria from Handel’s Hercules is a riveting and deeply moving example of the grand style.

Berlin 1906

“Bist du bei mir” was copied by Bach into his wife’s little music-book, but it is now known to be an aria from an opera by Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel. Marchesi sings this famous old song in what was conceived, in 1906, as “classical” style, that is, with a severe austerity and absolutely no ornament. She decides to sing it in the usual soprano key of E flat, even though the tessitura is taxing at modern pitch even for good natural voices. The legato is exemplary, and achieved with the least possible portamento, of which ornament, however, she gives a masterly demonstration in the second phrase. Every attack is of striking purity, illustrating what Garcia meant by the coup de glotte—a clean and neat sounding of the note without any hint of throatiness. She can attack the G above the stave successfully if the vowel is A (“Ach, wie vergnügt”) but the sound is not quite so pleasant on E or I. When her pupil John Freestone played Marchesi her record of Goldschmidt’s “Im Mai,” which she had recorded over thirty years previously, she was touched by the masterly vocal control demonstrated in the soft, sustained high singing in the final bars: “Une véritable tour de force!” she exclaimed—and she was quite right.

Among the other 1906 recordings, we can only wonder that she should attempt Arditi’s “Se saran rose,” which had been written for Patti and which Melba was even then programming as “The Melba Waltz!” Gaiety does not come easily to Blanche. In a mistaken attempt to fit two strophes onto one side, Chaminade’s “L’été” is taken too quickly, but this record does show something of her brilliant execution of florid music. Though “Eiapopeia” is an unmemorable song from the “folk” repertoire, Marchesi sings it with considerable charm, and includes one lovely sustained note on which executes a crescendo and diminuendo.

The two operatic arias suggest that she had been wise to give up the theatre after about 1903. In Santuzza’s aria from Cavalleria rusticana she is trying to produce a limpid, Marchesi tone and a flowing legato and the results are artistically and even dramatically impressive, despite the rather thin timbre. She strikes a fine high A at “Ah! l’amai!,” and is even able to realise Mascagni’s direction con grande passione. She is careful not to sing F, first space, in chest voice. Her low B natural is not very resonant, but on the whole this is a touching rendition of a popular aria, even though the voice is definitely not a verismo voice!

She never sang Tosca on the stage and although she has understood the fundamental nature of “Vissi d’arte”—to introduce a beautiful melody and some lovely quiet singing into the clash and horror of Act Two thereby creating a serene musical oasis—Marchesi takes too many extra and unnecessary breaths, tending to interrupt the flow of the music. On the other hand, her high B flat is successful (although she herself was dissatisfied with it) and so is the softer A flat that follows.

Columbia, 1912

Only one record is known to survive from a series of tests made for Columbia, and that is Meyer-Helmund’s “Das Zauberlied,” sung in English as “The magic song,” also recorded by Lotte Lehmann and Richard Tauber. Forgotten today, the composer was highly regarded by concert and salon audiences, and Marchesi dedicates as much care to the phrasing of this popular tune as she did to everything she sang, ending with a softly taken high B flat.

The electric recordings of
Blanche Marchesi

The short history of Marchesi’s electric recordings begins with two privately made acetate discs in 1934, which the singer gave to Dudley Scholte, a record collector and admirer of her art. No longer in pristine condition, these two records at least show something of the variety and wit that made her interpretations of “arie antiche italiane” so appreciated by her followers.

Thanks to pressure from her pupils, His Master’s Voice made private records when she was seventy-three and seventy-four years old, and these the singer sold herself from home. In a letter to a prospective purchaser dated 16 November 1936, she announces:

One side will be Queen Ann in Prison, attributed to her, the other side l’été by Chaminade, a coloratura piece sung by me 1906 and re-recorded. The contrast between this date and Ann Boleyn, sung in 1936; l’été is one of those Melba had given orders for destroying at the time.

We find Marchesi’s voice understandably thinner in timbre and of more limited range, with an occasional hoarseness in the lower medium notes. At the top of the stave she sings no higher than G. Over what is left her she still has complete control. It is the voice of an old lady who has been a most accomplished singer and musician, now taking more breaths than in yesteryear and making the most possible use of her lovely piano and pianissimo. She opens the striking song “O death, rock me asleep,” the words of which are attributed to Anne Boleyn, the music from a manuscript in the British Library, with a beautiful attack on the E flat, fourth space. The song is tragic, and Marchesi’s anguished articulation of the words and haunting legato ensure her triumph.

There are two extant takes of Dido’s final aria from Purcell’s opera and some of the differences between them are detailed by Marchesi herself in a letter to the record collector, Leo Riemens, dated 7 August 1936, and quoted in full in The Record Collector, Vol. 37, No. 3, by Jeffrey Miller:

…I have the two disks of Dido and ‘Amuri, Amuri’ but there are, as I was quite hoarse and quite collapsed the day I recorded, three doubtful notes in Dido—notes as I never produced them, quite wavering in pitch. It is miraculous how I could do it at all and really the record is so moving that people cry—even the charwoman cleaning next door cried, listening with my maid behind the door. But I cannot stand those three notes and wait with mad impatience to be able to make a new one…. The day I can I make the new one. It will vocally be better but artistically? Moods change.

Mr. Miller carefully examines the differences between the two takes.

Wolf’s “Nun wandre Maria,” is sung with great tenderness, and here the muted dynamics of the song enable her to maintain a hauntingly limpid piano. She suggests the crescendo where Wolf has asked for it and offers a flawless portamento wherever it is marked in the score. Her pronunciation of German follows nineteenth-century rules, as does her exquisite French in “La lettre,” a speciality of hers following on the same record side. The years of practice and experience enable her to produce beautiful and meaningful pianissimi on sustained sounds, as in “Komm!,” which the composer suggests should sound “as though from far away”. A great song, a master singer. On another side Marchesi sings two songs that do not seem particularly suitable to her seventy-four-year-old voice: Reger’s “Mariae Wiegenlied” and “Sne” by the Norwegian composer, Sigurd Lie. Both songs require a sinuous legato over wide intervals, which she does not seem to manage with her usual ease and fluency. She does, however, capture something of the weird snowscape atmosphere of “Sne,” which she sings in the original Norwegian.

Sorabji tells us that:

Quite one of her most astounding performances was the “Sicilian Muleteer’s Song” from the great Geni Sadero collection of Italian Folk Songs…a strange, exotic, haunting piece of vocal writing that steps right out of Europe…. Here in this song is the sort of melody with its turning, twisting melismata, its intricate ornaments, that you might hear sung any night in an Indian city. The muleteer is driving his mule home, through that strange enigmatic quasi-tropical Sicilian dusk…he tells how his heart and senses are consumed and dazed with love, interrupted from time to time with an invocation to Our Lady, and a spoken exhortation to the donkey in Sicilian dialect. …Fortunately there is a record of it…

Sorabji forgets to tell us that in this vivid record the music is slightly simplified, permissible in a folk song, but then all the full power of Marchesi’s imaginative art is poured forth to astonish and to move us.

The series ends with another extraordinary achievement, the Princess Iole’s recitative and aria “Peaceful rest, dear parent’s shade” from Handel’s musical drama Hercules. The Master Class, that lucrative extension to a famous singer’s career, had not yet been invented in 1937, but here on one four-minute record side, Blanche Marchesi draws on all the authority bestowed upon her by her long career of singing, study, and research to give us a lesson in style. The recitative is dramatic and fearlessly declaimed even though some of the notes are imperfect (rather like Lilli Lehmann in “Don Ottavio! Son morta!”), then comes Iole’s lovely aria, sung in sustained tones unforgettably charged with woeful regret, Marchesi employing her softest pianissimi—sounds that should linger in the ear of whoever understands singing.

Other pupils of Mathilde Marchesi

Esther Palliser, soprano

Emma Walters was born in Germantown, Philadelphia, on 28 July 1868. Her mother was a singer, her father a conductor. She is reported to have gone to Paris at the age of sixteen, first studying at the Conservatoire then with Mathilde Marchesi (and possibly also with Pauline Viardot-Garcia). She was heard at one of Madame Marchesi’s Matinées musicales in January 1888, under the stage name of Emma Sylvania, and on a later occasion sang Mélodies by Ambroise Thomas, accompanied by the composer. She made her operatic debut in Faust at Rouen in 1889, while in December that year she sang songs by Grieg, orchestrated and conducted by Sir Frederick Cowen, at a London Popular Concert, with the composer present in the audience.

In January 1890 she was engaged by the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company to sing Gianetta in the first American performances of The Gondoliers at Palmer’s Theater, New York; Richard D’Oyly Carte suggested the stage name Esther Palliser, which she would keep to the end of her busy career. The Gondoliers went on tour through New England from April 1890 then in June she appeared as Dolores in The Sea King by Richard Stahl at Palmer’s Theater. From September 1890 to January 1891 she repeated The Gondoliers at the Doyly Carte’s own theater in London, the Savoy. Sullivan clearly liked her voice, as he asked her to sing (as Rowena, moving up later to the star role, Rebecca) in the premiere of his serious opera Ivanhoe at the inauguration of the Royal English Opera House on 31 January 1891. At the same theater, in November, she sang Marie d’Angleterre in Messager’s La Basoche.

In November 1892 she sang Micaëla in a Royal Command Performance of Carmen with Zélie de Lussan at Windsor Castle. This came about because Sir Augustus Harris had engaged her for his autumn season at Covent Garden, where besides Micaëla she also sang Santuzza, Marguerite, Baucis, and Brangäne. She was re-engaged for the Grand Season, May–July 1893, singing Marguerite and Brangäne, also appearing in four of the Opera Concerts given by Harris at the St. James’s Hall.

Her career as a concert artist was distinguished. On 18 January 1893 at the Royal Albert Hall she sang in the premiere of the Mass in D by Ethel Smyth with Belle Cole, Ben Davies, and Watkin Mills, and later that year in that of Stanford’s Mass in G with the Bach Choir. On 1 January 1895 she sang in the Royal Choral Society’s Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall with Clara Butt, Edward Lloyd, and Charles Santley, and on 17 January 1896 sang in Sullivan’s The Golden Legend with Ben Davies and Watkin Mills. At the Leeds Festival in 1898 Sullivan conducted her in an aria by Bruch. On 8 March 1900 she sang with the Royal Philharmonic Society in the final scene from Die Walküre with the Scottish baritone Andrew Black. Early G&T artists—Palliser, Evangeline Florence, Alice Gomez, and David Bispham—gathered for a concert in aid of the London Hospital for Sick Children on 8 June 1901. We hear of concerts in Germany, France, and the USA, but have found no details. Her last public appearance may have been at the Panama-California Exhibition in San Diego in July 1916. She retired to California, and taught singing. The date of her death seems unavailable.

When the Gramophone & Typewriter Company engaged the young conductor Landon Ronald to entice singers of quality to make records they opened the door to hitherto undreamed-of possibilities: he was eventually useful in persuading Melba and Patti to record their voices, but meanwhile he managed to lure into the rather sordid G&T studios a series of interesting concert artists including Ben Davies, Charles Santley, Joseph O’Mara, H. Lane Wilson, David Bispham, Edward Lloyd, Alice Gomez, and Evangeline Florence, culminating in the historic red label records made during the Covent Garden summer season of 1902 featuring Suzanne Adams, Emma Calvé, Pol Plançon, Maurice Renaud, and Antonio Scotti. Some of the black label concert series were rather crudely recorded and may not have sold well; among the most elusive are the interesting titles recorded by Esther Palliser. She was not actually the first Marchesi pupil to enter the studio, for in 1900 the company had made a group of seven-inch Berliner records of Ellen Beach Yaw. Palliser’s most successful record is of two songs by American composers: Charles B. Hawley’s “The sweetest flower that blows” is a lovingly phrased performance of a delightfully unpretentious song and a model of lightly flowing legato with clearly articulated words. She knows where to apply delicate pressure, where to increase the pace and where to slow down. Lucky purchasers of the first pressings would discover a second song on the same single-sided record, Ethelbert Nevin’s “Mighty lak’ a rose,” sung with such charm that one wonders why G&T removed it from subsequent pressings by covering the offending second song with a metal plate.

In the other records there are hints that Palliser was reaching the end of her career. She is obliged to hurry through Salvatore Marchesi’s delightful song “La folletta” and Sir Georg Henschel’s “Spring,” though both offer moments of brilliant execution. Palliser’s “Ombra mai fu” is sung grandly, in the “Crystal Palace” style, and shows off the evenness of her scale. The dazzling and very difficult Saint-Saëns bolero-duet “El desdichado” is a rare example on early records of the surprising excellence that could be achieved in the nineteenth century when sisters assiduously practiced florid duets, blending their voices in effects rarely obtainable today. We hear Esther taking her high notes somewhat cautiously in head voice. Palliser is an excellent example of a Marchesi pupil of, perhaps, the second class.

Suzanne Adams, soprano

Unlike Palliser, Saville, and Parkina, Suzanne Adams was something resembling a brilliant star at Covent Garden and the Metropolitan, P. G. Hurst even going so far as declaring: “When, as often happened, she alternated with Melba in the latter’s favorite roles, no disappointment was felt, for in the vocal sense the two had remarkably much in common.” She was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 28 November 1872. When she was sixteen her aunt accompanied her to Paris, where she studied with Jacques Bouhy, later turning to Mathilde Marchesi. After appearing in several of Marchesi’s musical evenings, Adams, with an American reluctance to tolerate Marchesi’s autocratic ways, instigated a revolt and carried off several students with her, back to Bouhy. Her successful debut at the Paris Opéra as Juliette in January 1895 was followed by a period of insecurity and waiting. She began to suffer from bad health, which seems to have affected her career. In May 1898 she made a successful debut at Covent Garden as Juliette, publicized once more as a Marchesi pupil. P. G. Hurst records: “this altogether charming lady was a purely lyrical soprano of the Marchesi school, whose striking beauty and delightful stage presence set off to perfection a voice of that delicious limpidity so much beloved by English audiences of her day.” She sang a fairly wide range of roles, appearing in every Grand Season at Covent Garden until 1904, after which she does not seem to have sung in opera again. In 1906 and 1907 the violinist Albert Spalding played in a concert at which “the charming Suzanne Adams, of waning voice but charming personality” was the vocalist: “She sang not wisely….”

Adams made a successful Metropolitan debut as Juliette, with Jean de Reszke, on 4 January 1899; the last of her four Metropolitan seasons was in 1902–1903. She married the cellist Leo Stern in 1898; he wrote some charming songs for her, and they made one record together for the Columbia Phonograph Company during her concert tour of America in 1903. After his death in 1904 Adams restricted her appearances to the occasional concert. She remarried in 1915 and seems to have spent the rest of her life in London, where she did a certain amount of teaching; she died on 5 February 1953.

Posterity has not viewed the records of Suzanne Adams with enthusiasm, indeed she has been a controversial figure. The London red label G&Ts of 1902 would seem to show her almost in her prime, though her voice is beginning to acquire a slightly glassy timbre. Marchesi training is evidenced in the neatness and accuracy of her coloratura, the lovely evenness of the vocal line, and the perfection of her scale. The waltz song “Coquette,” written for her by her husband, the ’cellist Leo Stern, is an utterly charming picture of a winning personality: Adams has her own style, built largely on delicate nuances of rhythm, teasing pauses and so on. She studied Marguerite and Juliette with Gounod, and despite the clever cuts made to fit the music onto a 10-inch disc, her “Jewel Song” is a model of style. In Juliette’s waltz “Je veux vivre,” every acciaccatura is perfectly executed, but here we notice a not quite freely taken high C. Far from being merely a “canary,” Adams knows how to draw a fine legato in “Printemps nouveau” and especially in “Home, sweet home,” of which she has left two slightly differing takes, likely recorded on different dates. Note that Adams does not attempt a high A near the end of the record, nor does the pianist trill during the beginning of the coda. The second version which is thought to have been issued only on the cheaper black label, is transferred from the only known copy, which is sadly in deplorable condition.

Frances Saville, soprano

Frances Saville (San Francisco 1865–Burlingame 1935) was a daughter of the soprano Fanny Simonsen, a pupil of Gilbert Duprez and Manuel Garcia Jr, and the violinist and conductor Martin Simonsen. The family’s peripatetic artistic life was based in Australia. In 1881 Frances married John Saville Smith in Hobart, New Zealand, and always used his name professionally. At the age of eleven she had heard Ilma di Murska, an eccentric but celebrated Marchesi pupil, and decided that she must get to Paris and study with Madame Marchesi. After considerable stage and concert experience in the Antipodes, in 1891 she reached Paris and the atelier Marchesi. Her niece, known to operatic history as Frances Alda, would begin lessons with Madame Marchesi in 1903. Alda reminisced: “In Vienna, Aunt Frances was anything but encouraging or cordial to me…. I did not see Aunt Frances again for many years.” Then, in Venice, Alda’s husband, Giulio Gatti Casazza, glanced with approval at the occupant of a passing gondola, exclaiming: “Che bella donna!”…“It was my Aunt Frances.”

For much of her career Saville was inevitably compared with Marchesi’s great star, Melba: though Saville’s voice was the smaller it was exquisitely trained and her repertoire was wider, and she had the advantage of personal beauty and charm. As with Melba, Madame Marchesi launched her at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels, where she sang Juliette and Marguerite in 1892. She repeated these roles in St. Petersburg in 1893, adding Lucia, Gilda, Santuzza, and Elsa. She was also heard with pleasure in Moscow and Berlin before undertaking a six-month tour of England and Scotland in 1893–1894 with the Carl Rosa Opera, also singing for Queen Victoria at a Command Performance at Buckingham Palace. At Monte Carlo in 1894, she sang Otello with Tamagno and also in Cavalleria rusticana, then going on to appear at the Opéra-Comique and in Warsaw. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut on 18 November 1895 in Roméo et Juliette with Jean and Edouard de Reszke and Pol Plançon, and later appeared, with considerable success, as Violetta, Micaëla, and Marguerite. Then, in late December 1895, Melba re-appeared at the Metropolitan and, as Adrienne Simpson speculates, Saville:

…was not a star of the first rank and, given the commonsense attitude she displayed throughout her career, probably realised that she was never likely to attain the status enjoyed by a few exceptional singers such as Melba, she had proved that she could hold her own in the best vocal company.

In May 1897 she appeared at Covent Garden, where she was particularly successful as Violetta, and there she sang Manon for the first time. The Musical Times considered that she brought out “admirably the beguiling and fascinating traits in the character.” In October 1897 she sang Mimì at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna and Mahler offered her three guest nights at the Vienna Hofoper, which were so successful that she was offered a contract as a permanent member of the company. She had reached a port where she could feel secure, though she was not among the most highly paid artists: in German opera houses today the highest fees are paid to sopranos who sing the heavier roles, and no doubt things worked that way in Vienna, too. She endured the rigorous regimentation of life at the Hofoper for six years, not without some conflict with Mahler, but she was popular with audiences and had no rival light soprano to undermine her status. Returning to Covent Garden in 1898 she was put in the shade by Suzanne Adams, another young and fetching Marchesi pupil, and although she was praised for her Elsa when she returned to the Metropolitan for a guest engagement in 1898–1899, she was given few real opportunities. Tired of fighting with Mahler over her contract renewals, she bade farewell to her affectionate Viennese fans in Les Contes d’Hoffmann on 23 February 1903, and after some appearances in Warsaw and Prague that same year, she retired permanently.

The few records of Frances Saville made in 1902 reveal the perfectly trained voice of a singer possessing considerable charm, in particular in her affectionate performances of songs. “Morgen send’ich dir die Veilchen” by Erik Meyer-Helmund, himself a successful concert baritone and pupil of Julius Stockhausen, is a thought-provoking souvenir of the beautiful voice, refined art and charming manner required at “musical evenings” in those distant days. This type of vocal writing throws a searchlight on the voice (as Blanche Marchesi said of Mozart) and Saville reveals complete mastery of the style. The tricky melody of the far-from-easy opening bars shows off her lovely medium and lower notes—down to A below the stave—and in another song of his, “Ich hätte nicht daran gedacht,” she is equally appealing. Two French songs reveal her Parisian training, her sense of style making a touching thing of Tosti’s “Ninon.” Others have sung the Doll’s song from Les Contes d’Hoffmann more brilliantly, for in this music she is at the end of her tether; her divisions are slightly laboured, though she demonstrates a true Marchesi trill. In Elsa’s song to the breezes, her floating tones capture perfectly the mood of the piece, and indeed she was successful in both Lohengrin and Tannhäuser in Vienna.

Manon loses some of her lightness and grace when translated into German, but Saville’s two selections are delivered with considerable charm and insouciance. In the excerpt from Manon’s entrance, “Voyons, Manon, plus de chimères,” in which the heroine sulkily (but adorably) resents another young lady’s having a gold necklace, Saville gives a delightful interpretation, and she surprises us with a graceful flight to high D to end the “Gavotte.”

Saville’s vocal method is of the purest Marchesi mold: no vibrato disturbs the perfectly supported legato, and she takes all her notes above F in head voice. This would have made her fit in perfectly with German and Austrian taste at the time, but her niece Frances Alda was a Marchesi pupil who, like Melba and Eames, could take high notes in a ringing forte where necessary. Saville seems to proceed with caution above the stave, carefully husbanding her resources, suggesting reasons for her early retirement when she was only thirty-eight years old, although this method may well have appealed to Vienna audiences, accustomed to the “violin harmonics” style of certain Germanophone sopranos.

Elizabeth Parkina, soprano

Elizabeth Mary Parkinson was born in Butler, Missouri, apparently in October 1878, the daughter of a judge. Her first teacher (apart from her mother) was Mrs. W. C. Layton, a pupil of Lamperti, and such was her progress that with the help of local residents and a benefactor she was able to go to Paris in 1899 to study with Mathilde Marchesi. After some successful concert appearances she made her operatic debut in Marseille on 22 November 1901 as Irène in Massenet’s Sapho, in which, apparently, her American accent was derided. Continuing her studies, in April 1902 she sang at the celebration of the Golden Wedding of Mathilde and Salvatore Marchesi in music conducted by Massenet with Melba as soloist. On 15 December 1902 she sang Lakmé at the Opéra-Comique, and Mlle. Parkinson was praised.

Melba opened the doors of London society to her: although Blanche Marchesi told John Freestone that “Melba destroyed Parkina, body and soul!”, he supposed that all that had happened was that Melba had taken her to some “rather fast” parties! On 2 March 1904, now re-baptized “Elizabeth Parkina”, she sang “Depuis le jour” from Louise at a concert of the Royal Philharmonic Society, conducted by Sir Frederic Cowen. Melba had recommended Parkina to Messager, the Musical Director of Covent Garden, and on 13 May 1904 she made her debut as Siebel in Faust with her fellow Marchesi pupil Suzanne Adams: the Times pronounced that “Her attractive stage presence, her fresh and well-trained voice, and her musical way of singing brought her complete success.” On 28 May she first sang Musetta to the Mimì of her mentor, Nellie Melba, and the Times remarked: “her singing was quite admirable, and the remarkable similarity of the timbre of the voice to that of Mme. Melba gave new effect to the ensemble passages of the second act.” On 20 June the two appeared in Hélène by Saint-Saëns, which Melba had created in Monte Carlo in February. After concert appearances in London, Parkina appeared in a concert with Melba and Charles Gilibert at the Kansas City Convention Hall on 3 January 1905 to an audience of 10,000. Melba herself wrote from London to Mathilde Marchesi in Paris: “Your pupil Parkina is having a great success and you can well be proud of her.”

Following a recommendation from Melba to the Australian impresario J. C. Williamson, Parkina embarked on a concert tour of Australia in early 1905. She made her rentrée at Covent Garden in May in La bohème with Melba, Caruso, Scotti, and Gilibert, later appearing again in Faust, as Stéphano in Roméo et Juliette, and Amour in Orphée et Euridice. From December 1905 to March 1906 she sang in performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Mendelssohn’s incidental music at the Adelphi Theater, London. According to the Times critic: “Miss Parkina’s pure style and charming voice makes her songs more than unusually effective.”

Her 1906 Covent Garden season consisted of nine performances of Musetta, whereas in her last season, 1907, she shared the role with Alice Zeppilli: others were taking over her parts. She is not reported to have sung ever again.

She suffered from tuberculosis, of which she died in Colorado on 10 June 1922.

On page 57 of Singer’s Pilgrimage Blanche Marchesi indulges in a little harmless advertising for “the old firm” when she tells us that “A record exists on the gramophone [of Elizabeth Parkina] …‘J’ai vu passer l’hirondelle’, by Eva Dell’Acqua, which shows her perfect method, and speaks for her charming qualities and wonderful training.” It is, indeed, an exhilarating record, blending flawless execution with delightful insouciance; the scale passages are even and clear, the staccati sparkling, the trills impeccable. She uses tempo rubato with playful skill. Although Blanche believed that Parkina would have triumphed as Gilda or Lucia at Covent Garden had she only been allowed the chance, in that illustrious theater Mathilde’s pupils Nellie Melba and Selma Kurz tended to monopolize these star roles, and in 1907, Tetrazzini would appear on the scene.

On fine copies of Parkina’s records, we hear a voice of youthful freshness that has been assiduously trained to master either the most difficult coloratura or to sustain a perfect legato style; we may believe that those pupils resilient enough to undergo a complete course with Madame Marchesi would have legato firmly drummed into them, together with clear and elegant diction with rounded vowels and neat consonants. Her chest register is correctly blended into the medium register, and from the medium she ascends to the high notes by skillfully calling upon her head register, rising effortlessly to the high C. The early recording process did not take kindly to high soprano notes, however carefully sung, but most of Parkina’s ethereal tones above the stave are of ravishing quality. A limitation to her technique seems to appear in songs such as Massenet’s “Ouvre tes yeux bleus” or Leoncavallo’s “Mattinata” in which she is unable to open out in the high-lying finale as an Italian voice would like to do.

Like the most glamorous Marchesi pupils, Parkina possesses a vocal style of her own: decidedly appealing in the “Villanelle,” rising to considerable distinction in “Should he upbraid”—beautifully ornamented—dazzling in her trilling in the “Little grey linnet.” Parkina’s technique, hardly surprisingly, resembles Melba’s, though her pure, limpid timbre is less opulent and her singing is smaller in scale, both more intimate and more feminine. Let us say that one could not imagine the imperious Melba singing about a little grey linnet. A touching souvenir of Melba’s friendship with the younger singer is Parkina’s record of Tosti’s “La serenata,” of which she sings one strophe plus the “coda” that Tosti had composed especially for Melba, and which Melba had clearly passed on to Parkina. It is a graceful performance, and she also sings well Tosti’s “Spring.” This animated performance delightfully suggests something of the Edwardian musical comedy star—Ellaline Terris or Edna May, perhaps. Her most elaborate vocal performance is Bemberg’s “La fée aux chansons,” not one of his more memorable songs, though it gives her plenty of opportunity to display her airy, graceful and meticulously accurate coloratura.

Several of her records suggest a winningly extrovert personality recalling the caricature of Scotti carrying off his Musetta, held up on high, reproduced on page 130 of P. G. Hurst’s The Golden Age Recorded (second edition). Mr. Hurst heard Parkina at Covent Garden and reports that the voice was small but carried well in the theater.

Ada Crossley, contralto

Ada Crossley was born in Australia on 3 March 1871. Her lovely contralto voice, of considerable volume, attracted early attention, and in 1888 she began studying with Fanny Simonsen. After a few years of successful concertizing, in 1894 she embarked for London, where she began studying with Charles Santley. She auditioned for Melba, who was very impressed: “Oh, what a glorious voice; I’ve heard nothing like it for years!” This successful encounter led to Crossley leaving for Paris to study with Mathilde Marchesi. She made her London debut at a Queen’s Hall concert on 18 May 1895, and the Standard reported that she “displayed a well-developed voice, perhaps more mezzo-soprano than genuine contralto.”

As assisting artist, Crossley sang with Adelina Patti and Lillian Nordica. She was now in demand at oratorio performances, musical “at homes”, and ballad concerts. She was often summoned to sing privately for Queen Victoria (herself a contralto and a pupil of Lablache). The Monthly Musical Record for 1 November 1898, reviewing the Leeds Festival performance of Elijah on 5 October, underlines the advisability for young singers to be prepared for emergencies:

At the outset Miss Butt was absent, having mistaken the time of commencing. Miss Ada Crossley was sitting in the front seats, and Sir Arthur Sullivan called upon her to take the first part. It was rather a trying ordeal, but the young artist acquitted herself right well.

Embarking on her first concert tour of America with a prestigious booking at one of the Bagby Concerts at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in January 1903, she was suffering from a cold that prevented her from showing her talent in the best light. It was then that she made phonographic history by becoming the first artist to sing red seal records for the Victor Talking Machine Company, on 30 April 1903. In September 1903 she sailed to tour Australia and New Zealand with a company including the great pianist Percy Grainger, ending with concerts in South Africa. At this time she met and married the ship’s doctor, Hugo Muecke. After consolidating her position in England Crossley again toured Australia and New Zealand with Percy Grainger in 1908–1909. After a tour of South Africa in 1911 she was invited by Emma Albani to sing in the diva’s Farewell Concert at the Albert Hall on 14 October 1911. She died in London on 17 October 1929.

Ada Crossley’s four Victor records are a good cross-section of her repertoire, with two classical selections and two rather superior ballads. From “Caro mio ben” we gather that she has not realized the fundamentally amorous nature of the song, which she treats as a vehicle for floating beautiful tones and melting diminuendi. Hahn’s “Paysage”, which she sings with great care and considerable charm, shows off her Parisian training and may fairly be taken as a model by any singer. A very different Crossley is revealed in her joyous and vigorous singing of Albert Mallinson’s “New year’s song,” and Charles Willeby’s “Four-leaf clover.” In 1905 and 1906 she recorded a few titles for Pathé, the sound quality varying from murky and distorted to reasonably good; they reveal unsuspected qualities in Crossley’s singing. “The gleaner’s slumber song” is a performance of the greatest delicacy, Crossley lingering over ravishing pianissimi, whereas “Out on the rocks,” by the great Victorian contralto and teacher Charlotte Sainton-Dolby, is a dramatic confection calling for an exhibition of Crossley’s chest register, sinking here to G, and nicely joined to the medium. A ladylike restraint is always present. Her legato in the aria from Mendelssohn’s Saint Paul is wholly admirable, and it is a pity that she did not record more of the standard oratorio arias in the serene and yet expressive style she seems to have learned from Santley.

A complete history of the Marchesi school of singing, including a detailed listing of students and tables explaining Mathilde Marchesi’s method as well as her vocal lineage and legacy, is to be found in Roger Neill’s book Divas, Mathilde Marchesi and her pupils (NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, 2016), an extraordinary example of what can be achieved when research is energized by passion for one’s subject.

Producing faithful transfers of early recordings can sometimes be agonizingly daunting. Many of the recordings featured in this compilation were made during the first decade of recorded “classical” music, and it is a challenge to ascertain the correct playback speeds which replicate the musical pitch for each of the performances as originally recorded. In those early days there were no prescribed standards for regulating the rotating speed used in the recording process. Ascertaining correct playback speeds for vocal recordings is especially crucial because a variation of even one or two revolutions per minute can produce a distorted impression of the voice. Played too slowly, the voice takes on a sluggish, bloated quality, while a speed that is too fast will make a voice sound unnaturally thin and strident.

The first task in restoring an old recording should be to set an approximate speed by tuning the performance to its correct written key signature. Researching the keys of operatic selections is elementary since scores for most operas are easily available, but singers sometimes recorded arias in transposed keys to accommodate their discomfort with certain notes. Those transpositions are usually obvious because the voice sounds wrong when the record is played at score pitch. Finding the key signatures of songs and Lieder requires more guesswork because they were often published in several different keys to accommodate high and low voices. Sopranos and tenors usually perform songs in the published high keys, but there are outliers. An outstanding example found here is Frances Saville’s recording of Schubert’s “Heidenröslein.” The published high key for this song is G, but playing her record at a speed similar to the other discs made that day, it is clear that she chose to sing it a fourth below, in the key of D. Her choice of that key is unusual, but the timbre of her voice then remains consistent with each of her other records.

Once the playback speed has been set to the key signature of the music, we must try to discover how the accompanying piano or orchestra was tuned. The calibration of A above middle C at 440 Hertz (Hz) was most often thought to be the standard for tuning since the beginning of the twentieth century. At one point, however, I began noticing that singers on early records made in England did not sound natural at 440 Hz, while American recordings sounded fine at the supposed 440 Hz standard. Research concerning pitch standardization in the nineteenth century revealed that the tuning of pianos, orchestras, and wind bands in England had risen more than a quarter tone above 440 Hz to a frequency of 452 Hz. Singers coming from the continent expressed displeasure at having to sing at this high tuning because of the strain it put on their voices. In fact, England’s premiere tenor, Sims Reeves, refused to sing at the Crystal Palace Handel Triennial Festival in 1877 because the conductor insisted on the 452 Hz tuning.

In 1895 Henry Wood lowered the tuning of the orchestra for his London Prominade concerts, but the switch from high to lower pitch did not occur overnight, and as late as 1907 baritone Harry Plunket Green declined to sing Stanford’s Songs of the Sea for the Stock Exchange Orchestral Society at the Alexandra Palace because they still adhered to the high English tuning. Through the 1920s wind band pitch remained at 452 Hz, and therefore acoustic English recordings of bands and performances with band accompaniment should be played at that pitch.

The five G&T records that Esther Palliser made in London in 1902 sounded, to my ear, sluggish at 440 Hz when pitched to the published keys. Perhaps she had requested that her accompanist, Landon Ronald, transpose each selection up a semitone, but that is highly unlikely. Christian Zwarg, noted authority on early recordings, postulates that until 1904, G&T’s London recordings were made using a piano tuned to the high 452 Hz pitch. After careful listening, I became convinced that he is correct. Not surprisingly I found the same to be true for Suzanne Adams’s G&Ts made the same year. I have consequently tuned those to the higher pitch. By 1904 the company seems to have tuned their pianos to a nominal 440 Hz, as recordings made then sound natural at that pitch. I have, therefore, tuned Elizabeth Parkina’s records to the lower pitch.

For the records of Ada Crossley included in this set, the Victors sound absolutely natural at 440 Hz. For the three Pathé discs, the aria from Mendelssohn’s Saint Paul was recorded with band accompaniment definitely tuned to 452 Hz, and I believe that the other two records, both with piano accompaniment, were also recorded using the higher tuning. The Berlin recordings of Blanche Marchesi were recorded at 440 Hz, as that pitch had been well established in the German capital. Pitch in Vienna, on the other hand, was set at 447 Hz and was finally lowered only when Felix Weingartner took over the directorship of the Hofoper in 1907. Therefore, I have pitched Frances Saville’s recordings made in 1902 at that higher frequency, which produces a much more natural timbre.