[78-L] Advent of Electrical Recording

[Michael Quinn]

Matthew Duncan wrote:

>I believe the first Gilbert and Sullivan album set with a pictorial cover was "The Mikado" on HMV, 1917.  Prior to this album sets were issued on HMV without pictorial covers.   The earliest of these held single sided discs such as Verdi's 'Ernarni' on HMV from 1903, the label's first complete recording of an opera as opposed to issuing excepts from them was issued in a more plain cover than the 1917 G&S one mentioned above and was made up of 40 single sided discs.  I believe the discs were 12" in size and were G&T labelled records (pre-Nipper logo).
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>Matthew Duncan.
>England.
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The November 1918 HMV UK catalogue lists the following sets as being 
provided in illustrated albums -

In A Persian Garden (Liza Lehmann)
Merrie England (Edward German)
The Boatswain's Mate (Ethel Smythe)
The Mikado (Gilbert & Sullivan)
    The only one I recollect seeing was the Merrie England which had an 
attractive multi-colour pictorial art cover.

Concerning earlier opera sets - I have seen pre World War 1 Pathè sets 
without no specific decoration or art work
There were early sets on German G&T and Odeon but I have not seen them. 
The mentioned set of Ernani  on 40 sides is a fantasy and sadly does not 
exist.
Early celebrity HMV vocals often had a picture of the singer attached to 
the rather flimsy paper covers of the day. Also Fonotipia featured 
pictures of the singer pasted onto their early covers back to about 
1905. With Victor you have those pictures of Melba, Tamagno and Patti 
revealed when the disc is removed from  the red card cover which has a 
glassine window over the label hole.
Regards
Mike Quinn