Enrico Caruso "Manon-O dolce incanto-Il Sogno" Victor Red Label 81031 (1904)

Something I think that people often take for granted when appreciating music is the impact that the electric recording process had on the artists. When Caruso made this recording at Carnegie Hall in 1904, he wasn't in a posh studio with noise-canceling headphones and a big name producer mixing his voice with an autotuner. In fact, there was no electricity in this process at all. Caruso is simply singing into a large cone horn, and the vibrations made by his voice are guiding a stylus which is making an impression on a master wax disc.

For my part, I feel that we can get closer to the artist and the music itself in this way. Especially wonderful in this recording is that Caruso is accompanied by a simple one-handed piano instead of some massive orchestra. It draws your attention to his voice...the words. Listen to the emotion from 2:26-2:33 and again from 3:00 to 3:10. I am astounded that his voice still carries so much power, some 106 years after this recording.

I sometimes have people ask me what's written on the reverse of the one-sided Victor Red Label. Essentially, they're the "liner notes" that we knew as a later generation, and that this generation, sadly, will never experience.

I'll reproduce it here for you:

"81031--Manon--Il sogno (The Dream)

Massenet's Manon is a setting of the familiar story of Abbe Prevost, which has been used by Verdi for Traviata, by Puccini for Manon Lescaut, and produced in dramatic form as Camille, etc. The librettists, however, have written for Massenet's opera an original last act, the action taking place on a lonely road on the way to Havre, where Manon meets her lover and dies in his arms.

Massenet's work was one of the great successes of the Paris Opera Comique in 1885, and it is now frequently performed in America, and the music is quite the best this composer has produced. This delicately beautiful "The Dream" is sung by Des Grieux in Act II, at the apartment in Paris. Manon, unknown to Des Grieux, has succumbed to temptation and determined to fly with De Bretigny. Wholly unsuspecting, Des Grieux, more in love than ever, plans for their future and relates his dream.

Des Grieux:

With fancy's eye I saw, Manon, a sweet and lowly cot,
Its white walls deck'd with flowers fair gleam'd thro' the wood!
Beneath whose peaceful shadows ran clear the babbling brook;
Overhead 'mid verdent leaves sang so sweet and full the joyous birds.
'Tis paradise!
Ah! no, all is sad, so sad and dreary,
For, O my only love, thou art not here, not there!
No! for thus we'll pass our life if but thou wilt, O Manon!"

Thanks for listening.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Caruso
• Victor
• Red Label
• record
• 78RPM
• 1904
• opera
• acoustic
• Victrola
• New York

[louise27613]

I read that Bejamino Gigli did an amazing recording of this. Anyone have it??