INTRODUCTION
The vocals here date from the so-called 'golden age'
of operatic singing in the early years of the 20th
century. Whereas the three vocal records on the 78s
demo page (which are also included here) were chosen
principally for their technical quality, the
recordings here were selected more for their musical
interest, and in some cases the quality is not quite
as good as the demo records.
The object has been to retain as much as possible of
the quality of the voices, so minimum filtering has
been carried out: no affordable digital noise
reduction was available at the time I made these
transfers, but more recently I've been able to apply
noise reduction - see note below. On the whole the
surface noise is reasonable, with occasional slight
wear noises or clicks. Equalization for the
pre-electrical recordings has been carried out by ear,
since there is obviously no agreed standard.
Most transfers of this sort of material to LP or CD
that I have heard are so determined to remove the
surface noise that they also take all the life out of
the voices. I understand that non-collectors can find
the surface noise very distracting: but do try to
listen through the remaning noise and I think you will
find a surprising vitality to the voices: even quite
early recordings, such as the Tamagno (1903) bring out
the voice quite vividly when carefully equalized and
not over-filtered. I should add that the small
speakers usually used with computers tend to be rather
peaky and exaggerate the surface noise. If you can
connect your computer to your hi-fi you will hear a
considerable improvement.
Speed is always a difficulty with older pre-electric
recordings: prior to around 1920 there was no agreed
speed, and variations from 75 to 83 were common. The
speed was only occasionally given on the label, though
some some catalogues did show them (however these
should be approached with caution and not taken as
gospel). The obvious approach of pitching the
recording against a score is also not reliable, since
singers sometimes transposed arias to suit their
voices (as with the Melba and Tamagno recordings here,
both apparently transposed down a semitone); also
modern concert pitch (A=440) was not an international
standard until 1939, and recordings may have been made
in concert pitch (A=440), continental (or French)
pitch (A=435), London Philharmonic pitch (several
different, including A=433.2 and the uncomfortably
high A=452.5), or just out of tune. In the end there
is always an element of guesswork and speeds have to
be set with regard to published speed, pitch, and the
resultant sound.
These recordings have been transferred to MP3 files:
if you need help in downloading or playing them please
refer to this
page.
Incidentally, the flowery decorations across the top
of the screen were taken from the 1914 HMV catalogue
(with the wording changed to suit this page) (though
the flower columns are modern clip-art, I'm afraid).
Noise reduction was carried out using ClickRepair and
Denoise from Brian Davies (no longer available), with
the aim or reducing, rather than totally removing, the
noise with the object of doing as little damage as
possible to the sound of the voices. Occasionally
there is actual damage and wear - not surprising in
records around 100 years old - which can't be reduced
as successfully.
Some other links:
The Metropolitan Opera, New
York, has a historical section.
Andrea Suhm-Binder's site is
dedicated to her operatic collection and includes some
audio downloads (taken, I assume, from commercially
available transfers) and a shop (in Germany).
Links to commercial sites are provided for your
information only.
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