Giovanni Zenatello & Giuseppe Noto - 'Si, pel Ciel!' from Otello (1926 Live at Covent Garden)

One of the greatest interpreter of Verdi's Otello, Giovanni Zenatello (1876.2.2 ~ 1949. 2. 11) & baritone Giuseppe Noto sings a famous duet, 'Si, pel ciel!' from 'Otello'. Recorded live at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, on June 17th, 1926.

I've wrote some infos about these 1926 Covent Garden recordings on my Chaliapin and Melba Live recording postings, so I wouldn't go much into detail here this time. None of the recordings made at this session never saw the light of day until the 1970s, when the British firm Historic Masters issued this vinyl prssing pressed from the original masters.

Even though they figured that this is the best result ever from this Zenatello live session, it is obvious why this was never released. For one thing, the sound level is not constant at all, but dim at times, and loud enough to overload the whole signal. Also, there was some serious copyright problems that prevented this record being released - the Desdemona of this production was Lotte Lehmann, who made her exclusive contract with Odeon-Parlophon at that time.

Zenatello made several recordings from Otello beginning in 1907 with Fonotipia, and his rendition of Monologue of Otello (Dio, mi potevi scagliar) from 1915 Edison is one of the best performance of the aria I've ever heard.

The record has a serious problem of overload at times, so I tried my best to adjust the volume here and there. I also tried to minimize the surface noise as much as I could. Even though this is a vinyl pressing, the surface noise was rather severe, as the masters were pretty much deteriorated, and the vinyl itself is very gritty (obviously virgin vinyl was not used here)

I couldn't find the photo for the baritone Giuseppe Noto, so I only used the photo of Zenatello at the beginning. Also I have to make some apologies regarding the blurry label photo. Early pressings of Historic Masters have dark blue labels with some silver letters printed it, and they are even difficult to read as the silver letters are starting to fade out over the years.

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Category:

Music

Tags:

• Giovanni
• Zenatello
• Giuseppe
• Noto
• Si
• pel
• ciel
• Otello
• 1926
• Covent
• Garden
• Live
• 78rpm

[MrGer2295]

This two Performers are really Great!!! Thank you for sharing this video.

[JhRafMusicaVieja]

The recording sounds very good. It´s amazing listen a recording live from the 1920´s (I´m sorry for my english). Greetings.