[78-L] From a Vault in Paris, Sounds of Opera 1907

[David Weiner]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/arts/music/17vaul.html


By ALAN RIDING

PARIS  On Dec. 24, 1907, a group of bewhiskered men gathered in the bowels
of the Paris Opera to begin a project that by definition they could never
see to fruition. First, 24 carefully wrapped wax records were placed inside
two lead and iron containers. These were then sealed and locked in a small
storage room with instructions that they should remain undisturbed for 100
years.

The man behind this musical time capsule was Alfred Clark, a New Yorker who
headed the London-based Gramophone Company and had provided the records. And
in truth, once the ceremony was over, he had achieved his primary objective
of drawing attention to his company and to the new flat-disc records it was
promoting to compete with the better-known cylinders.

I know of no other case where a commercial firm has obtained so much free
publicity as we have, he wrote to a colleague two days later.

The Paris Opera displayed a more elevated sense of history. Through this
selection of opera arias and instrumental pieces, it announced, future
generations could discover the musical taste and the quality of sound
recording of the early 20th century.

French officials also predicted radical changes in recording technology. So
in 1912, when they added 24 records and two more containers to the trove,
they included a new hand-cranked gramophone, along with instructions on how
it worked and a score of spare stylus needles.

Now the 100 years are up, and after lengthy examination, cleaning and
digitizing of the records, EMI, the heir to the Gramophone Company, is
reissuing them on three CDs. The collection will be released in France later
this month as Les Urnes de lOpéra and in the United States in early April
with the English subtitle Treasures From the Paris Opera Vaults.

Most intriguing is the repertory chosen for posterity, and here the surprise
is the lack of surprises. Wouldnt any opera season today also offer
evergreens by Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini as well as by Bizet,
Gounod, Wagner and Mozart And wont many concert programs this year include
instrumental pieces by Beethoven and Chopin

Along with these household names are French composers whose lasting
popularity was perhaps less assured. In practice Massenet and Saint-Saëns,
who were both still alive in 1907, have fared well in the interim. But
operas by Adolphe Adam, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Victor Massé and Ambroise Thomas
(apart from his Hamlet) are now rarely performed, even in France.

The passage of time is also apparent in the way pre-19th-century music was
largely overlooked. Although Mozart was hardly in vogue in 1907, he made the
list with arias from Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni. But there was no
room for Gluck, Handel or Monteverdi, who in recent times have been called
on to satisfy the opera worlds need for novelty.

The quality of the recordings themselves is much as might be expected. A
century ago, when recordings were made by piping sound through a horn to a
diaphragm attached to a cutting stylus, scratchy sound was inevitable.
Further, because string instruments were barely audible in early recordings,
technicians favored the piano and wind instruments.

The Gramophone Companys international reach enabled it to feature the top
singers of the day. The great tenor Enrico Caruso can be heard in three
excerpts from Verdi and one each from Donizetti and Puccini, and the
Australian soprano Nellie Melba sings a solo from Verdis Rigoletto and
Cherubinos Voi che sapete from Le Nozze di Figaro.

The legendary Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin could hardly be omitted,
although he sings only a Russian ballad. In contrast, the Italian tenor
Francesco Tamagno, who created the title role in Verdis Otello in 1887,
offers a dramatic reprise of the Moors dying aria, Niun mi tema, to piano
accompaniment.

Other singers in the time capsule may be known only to opera buffs, but some
earned footnotes in opera history. Hector Dufranne, for instance, created
the baritone role of Golaud in Debussys Pelléas et Mélisande, and Ernestine
Schumann-Heink created the role of Clytemnestra in Strausss Elektra.

Yet the dream of Alfred Clark and the Paris Opera that these records would
be heard a century later has been only partly realized.

In 1989, while air-conditioning was being installed, the opera houses
administrator insisted on opening the storage room where the containers
were. It was then discovered that one of the 1912 containers had been opened
and emptied and that the gramophone was missing. The three remaining
containers were moved to the French National Library.

So in December 2007, when two of the sealed containers were presented to the
news media at the opera house before being opened, the gramophone on display
was actually an identical period copy of the one that had been stolen.

There were further complications. The records had been wrapped in
asbestos-covered cloth, which only technicians wearing all-body protection
could handle. They had also been separated by thick sheets of glass; in one
container, 9 of 13 sheets had broken. But most records were undamaged.

By good fortune, the first 1907 container and the surviving 1912 container
included parchments with a detailed list of all the musical pieces chosen in
each year. As a result, thanks to the national librarys collection of
350,000 pre-1938 recordings, it was possible to digitize the same records as
those missing from 1912.

Finally, it was decided to leave the other 1907 container sealed and again
to use identical recordings from the librarys collection. Even if these old
records are played once, they are slightly damaged by the needle, said
Elizabeth Giuliani, who oversaw the project at the library. We decided to
await new optical technologies that can read them without touching them.

So even now the experiment is not quite over.

But it has at least drawn attention to a long-ignored plaque set in the
marble floor at the entrance to the Comédie-Française, Frances national
theater. Dated Dec. 10, 1957, it notes that a live recording of a
performance of Henry de Montherlants play Port-Royal is buried there for the
attention of future times.

It just doesnt say when the recordings should be dug up.