Florence Austral - Ocean, thou mighty monster from Oberon (Weber)

Florence Austral singing Ocean, thou mighty monster (Ozean, du Ungeheuer) from Weber's opera Oberon. Recorded for HMV in 1928. John Barbirolli conducting the Royal Opera Orch. of Covent Garden. I have also posted versions by Lehmann and Bindernagel. Austral (1892-1968) was born Florence Wilson in Australia but used the stage name Austral in honor of her country of birth. Her career was primarily in England but she toured Europe and the US. A very powefuil voice, often compared to Flagstad. She developed multiple sclerosis in 1930 which curtailed her career. She was almost completely paralized the last 20 years of her life.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Austral
• Barbirolli
• Oberson
• Weber
• HMV

[1920sbuff]

Excellent too although I slightly prefer Bindernagel.

[merrihew]

@1920sbuff I find that I have another version by Gadski which is pretty good which I'll post.

[MrSwifts31]

@OpAus

Indeed,and at Covent Garden you ended up(many years ago) with performances that could (as in Lucia) be heard by the audience in 5 languages,due to the fact that all the singers were singing it in the own tongue,and weren't going to re~learn it(in the original) for anyone!

I don't think there are any recordings of this,and while it would sound very odd,it would be great to hear it.

[MrSwifts31]

@transformingArt

Hello there,In response to your query.Oberon was written in English,so mos English speaking singers sing it that way.In the dim and distant past most opera singers sang translations of opera into their native tongue(,to enable their own audiences to understand the opera.I am afraid(then) they were too lazy to investigate the story of the opera.(The audience that is).It was both to attract audiences AND sell records.

[OpAus]

TransformingArt5 - it was written in English and first performed at Covent Garden. In this case the German is the later translation. Apart from this one instance, the 1930's was the end of the era when singers sang in the language in which they knew the work and there were cases of many languages used in the one perfomance. Austral and others belonged to English National Opera which wanted the English to understand what they were listening to.

[1920sbuff]

@merrihew Looking forward to it.

[NEWbobofhollywood]

I find her intonation to be disagreeable. Reminded me a bit of Florence Foster Jenkins.

[transformingArt]

Wonderful singing, but I wonder why most of English/Australian opera singers tend to sing in English, especially in 1920s. I have a CD of compilation of singers like Austral, Peter Dawson, and some others, and even they were capable of singing these with the original language, they always made recordings in English; I really wonder.

[65attila]

Magnificent performance by s soprano - not known enough. Thanks for posting.

John