[78-L] A Chaliapin Covent Garden Question or Two

[David Lennick]

There's also a 3-LP set of Covent Garden live performances that EMI put out in 
1979. At one point in 1926 there were plans for HMV to record 10 operas a year. 
But remember that this was still the 20s, electrical recording was in its 
infancy, the engineers got one shot at it and they were miles away from the 
opera house, some sides overmodulated or distorted, some sides were too quiet 
to issue on the noisy shellac of the time, side breaks occurred wherever they 
ran out of wax, some abrupt cutoffs occurred because of what Keith Hardwick 
termed "an apparent horror of capturing audience applause", and some sides 
couldn't be issued because some of the artistes were under contract to Columbia.

dl

David Lewis wrote:
> I realize there's a book Called "Covent Garden On Record" -- even thumbed through a copy long ago. But I doubt I can refer to it before I do my show Thursday and wonder if anyone can answer some of these things off the top.
>  
> I know of the Melba Farewell Recital of 1926 and Chaliapin's recorded appearances in Mefistofile (1926), Faust (1927) and Boris Godunov (1928). My question is, of all of the Covent Garden performances given in these years, why him? Apart from the fact that he was great, of course. Or were these recordings part of a more extensive project of recording at Covent Garden in the late 20s?
>  
> At the end of one side I have of Mefistofele -- on a cheap CD reissue -- Chaliapin as the devil is whistling frantically and is cut off in mid-whistle with a loud thump. Is that in the original, or is that a by-product of my cheap CD reissue?
>  
> Did Chaliapin ever work on radio?  
>  
> thanks for stoppin' by and reading my post on Chaliapin 
> 
> Uncle Dave Lewis
> uncledavelewis at hotmail.com 		 	   		  
> ________________________________