Fernando de Lucia - Mattinata (Leoncavallo)

with orchestra.
Fonotipia master xPh 4491, rec. Milan, January 14 1911.
While today Fernando de Lucia (1860-1925) is regarded as a prime example of a pre-verismo bel canto tenor, it is interesting to note that his first big successes were in the operas of Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and Puccini. He created the leading tenor parts in no less than four Mascagni operas (LAmico Fritz, I Rantzau, Silvana, and Iris), and was Covent Garden's and the Met's first Canio (both in 1893). His Rossini, Mozart, and Verdi was received rather lukewarm, sometimes even with some hostility. He must have been a great actor, for his voice clearly was not made for Mascagni, who once said his tenors were supposed to "shout, shout, shout!" Gradually his bel canto repertoire was appreciated more and more - if this was due to a change in the public's taste or lots of practice has to remain an open question. I have little doubts, however, that the verismo repertoire did his voice nothing good, and already in 1905 de Lucia began to thin out his schedule, although his last stages appearances at the Scala (in 1916) and his home town Naples (in 1917) were a decade later. He continued to sing the odd concert for a few years. His last public appearance was at the sad occasion of Caruso's funeral, where he sang the "Pietà, Signore" - a little ironic twist when you consider that it was Caruso with his rather modern style that more or less finished off the tenors of the older school of singing. It is interesting to compare Carusos famous recording of the Mattinata with this version by de Lucia to hear how much singing changed in a comparatively short time.

Category:

Music

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• song
• canzone
• Fernando
• de
• Lucia
• tenor
• Mattinata
• Ruggiero
• Leoncavallo
• Fonotipia

[otterhouse]

Very nice how he "colours" his voice.

Thanks again for transferring and uploading this stuff...

By the way, do you know "truesoundtransfers" from christian Zwarg? Of not, google it out...

Greetings,

Rolf, Netherlands,

@otterhouse on Twitter

[goldenageofsong]

Chris has been a friend for more than a decade, and some of the discs he made transfers for his CDs from are actually mine ...

But I, too, would advise anybody interested in early sound recordings to check out his company - he has excellent stuff, including lots and lots of incredibly rare stuff, and his transfers are absolutely first class (which means usually better than mine ...)

[chastenor]

Interesting: 'almost goat-like'. My understanding of the older bel canto tradition is that a wide vibrato was a deliberate technique. Early reviews of Caruso praise him because he does NOT sing like a goat, suggesting that this was something new. So perhaps the old higher speeds of De Lucia records were correct. After all, they were presumably reproduced by people who had heard him sing. I have done some reading today, there is no suggestion anywhere that De Lucia had a magnificent voice.

[goldenageofsong]

There is a certain style of artificial vibrato of old-style singers; you can hear that in the recordings of many pre-verismo singers - Giuseppe Kaschmann is an extreme example. If you speed such discs up, at a certain point this becomes cartoonish. But, as I think you'll agree, it's not possible to really know what he sounded like, for I don't think a modern transfer of his voice was ever made by an engineer who actually head him - his last performance out of Naples was in 1916, after all.

[goldenageofsong]

"Serious" engineering (by which I mean not just transfering a disc with the standard 78 rpm, but actually looking in the score) was very unusual prior to the late 1970s, so I guess that most, if not all of those engineers weren't even born when de Lucia made his last appearances. The bright side of this is that we can all decide for ourselves how it sounds best and adjust our turntables accordingly ...

[31operafan]

Cool! :) This wasn't long after Caruso's version. (Ironically, this song was written for Caruso.)

[svjatazarov]

ЯРКО ВЫРАЖЕННАЯ ШКОЛА НА У, ДАЖ СЛЫШНО КАК НЕКОТОРЫЕ ГЛАСНЫЕ УТРИРОВАННО ЗАМЕНЯЕТ НА У......

[abracadabranque]

Un temps où les ténors sonnaient comme nos barytons actuels,la puissance en plus!

[lodiopera]

salve, se non sbaglio il disco e stato suonato a una velocita superiore ,io ho il disco fonotipia e la sua voce e piu cupa , e scura, quindi questo documento e falsato , questa non e la vera voce di de lucia , mi scuso per la precisione

[meltzerboy]

There does seem to be a progression in the use--or rather, abuse--of the sob, from Caruso to Lauri-Volpi to Pertile. Still, even Pertile gets away with all the shuddering and quivering, disrupting the legato musical line, and his occasionally unpleasant tone, which speaks to the strength of his singing apart from these aberrations.

[AulicExclusiva]

Gigli uses the catch for drama. Of course he could sing high notes without it. He just liked the impression that the high note was wrung from him by sheer passion.

I like the way Caruso executes the Rubini sob cleanly and elegantly. In later stages tenors would turn it into a loud sigh (Giacomo Lauri Volpi) or a pained shudder (Aureliano Pertile).

[meltzerboy]

Gigli could have transitioned to head register without that "catch," I assume; it just made it easier for him. Would you say that both the Rubini and Caruso ornamental sob (and Gigli's sob) became what one might call a mannerism? It seems to me Caruso uses it more frequently than other tenors of his time, just as Bonci, Anselmi, et al use accacciatura quite freely. Maybe that's what Pons was going for--an array of ornamental aspirates!

[AulicExclusiva]

Gigli's sob was a "catch" which helped him find the head register—it is perfectly exemplified in the way he catapults the High C in his Di quella pira record.

The Rubini Sob is an ornament. It is almost invariably used in the final "turn" of the aria Donna non vidi mai, when 'deh non cessar' becomes 'deh no-Hon cessar'. Caruso uses it there and in Parmi veder le lagrime, in the phrase "farti quaggiù beata", where in the high note in giu he breaks the u and sings giu-hu.

[meltzerboy]

Yes, which then became the "Caruso sob" followed, in turn, by the "Gigli sob." But it was Rubini who started both traditions, for better or worse.