Christoph Gluck Orfeo ed Euridice (concise version in Italian) Fritz Stiedry conducting the Southern Philharmonic Orchestra Kathleen Ferrier, Anne Ayars, Zoe Vlachopoulos & the Glyndebourne Festival Chorus (Recorded 1947) VIP Records OP-1005 - $12.50 (US Shipping Including) Read the Customer Review of this performance. Christoph Gluck was born in 1714 in what is now known as Czechoslovakia. At a young age he left home to pursue a career in music. He travelled throughout Europe, studying and absorbing the various musical styles of the day, until he settled in Vienna in 1752. He was granted a pension by Prince Lobkowitz, and took a position there as director of the royal orchestra and opera. Along with the poet Calzabigi, Gluck wrote several operas, most notably Orfeo ed Euridice, based on the Greek myth of Orpheus's trip to the underworld. Gluck's approach to the music was unique. Instead of the traditional florid, ornamented music that was so often irrelevant to the story being told, Gluck resolved to make the music serve the poetry by expressing the drama of the situation. The storyline of Orfeo ed Euridice was simple and direct, with understandable emotional motivation behind the characters' actions. Gluck blurred the line between recitative and aria, giving the work a continuity that other contemporary operas lacked. The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music sums it up by saying, "Gluck's music can have driving energy, but also a serenity reaching to the sublime. His historical importance rests on his establishment of a new equilibrium between music and drama, and his greatness on the power and clarity with which he projected that vision. He dissolved the drama in music instead of merely illustrating it." Fritz Stiedry was born in Vienna in 1893. He worked as an assitant to Gustav Mahler along side Bruno Walter in the first decade of the 20th century, and like Walter, was driven from Berlin in 1933. He spent a few years in Russia before emigrating to the United States in 1938. He was one of the principal conductors at the Metropolitan Opera in the 40s and 50s, and passed away in Switzerland in 1968. But this particular recording of Gluck's masterpiece is important primarily for the contribution of the contralto singing the title role... Kathleen Ferrier. Born in Lancashire in 1912, Ferrier showed promise as a singer and pianist at an early age, but the family's financial circumstances required her to leave school and take a job at age 14. Her singing attracted the attention of vocal instructor, J. E. Hutchinson, who recognized her God-given talent and helped her build a repetoire of music by Handel, Purcell and Bach. Baritone, Roy Henderson continued her training in German art songs by Brahms, Schubert and Schumann. As soon as she was introduced to the public, she became an overnight success, performing with all of the greatest conductors and orchestras of the time, including Bruno Walter, who recognized her voice as being perfect for Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde.. She performed as Lucrecia in Britten's Rape of Lucrecia, and sang the lead role in Orfeo ed Euridice at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1947, which led to this particular recording of the work. In 1951, she underwent treatment for breast cancer, which temporarily interrupted her career. Two years later, even though she was very ill, Ferrier was scheduled to sing Orfeo again under the baton of John Barbirolli. But she was only able to take the stage in two performances. She died of breast cancer at age 41. Bruno Walter wrote that "Kathleen Ferrier was a woman of good humor, and should be remembered in a major key." The emotion in her singing still rings true, and the conviction and honesty comes through loud and clear across the years since she passed away. This recording is a testament to her greatness... a voice that was silenced much too soon. -Stephen Worth VIP OP-1005 Track Listings Track Number Track Title Time Christoph Gluck Orfeo ed Euridice Track 01 Ah, se intorno a quest'urna funesta 3:49 Track 02 Amici, quel lamento 2:02 Track 03 Euridice! Euridice! Ah! Questo nome sanno 1:17 Track 04 Piango il mio ben cos 1:26 Track 05 O Numi, barbari numi 0:42 Track 06 Se il dolce suon 1:41 Track 07 Gli sguardi trattieni 1:01 Track 08 Che disse! Ch' ascoltai! 1:22 Track 09 Act 2 Prelude: "Danza in E Flat" 4:47 Track 10 Chi mai dell'Erebo fralle caligini 1:43 Track 11 Deh! placetevi con me! 2:32 Track 12 Misero giovane... Mille pene ombre moleste 1:22 Track 13 Dance of the Blessed Spirits 1:59 Track 14 Questo asilo 2:25 Track 15 Che puro ciel! 4:54 Track 16 Torna, o bella, al tuo consorte 2:30 Track 17 Vieni, segui i miei passi 2:32 Track 18 Vieni, appaga il tuo consorte! 3:42 Track 19 Ah, dovess'io saper 1:28 Track 20 Che fiero momento 2:42 Track 21 Ecco un nuovo tormento! 1:22 Track 22 Che faro senza Euridice? Click on the title to download a sample MP3 3:12 Track 23 Ah! finisca e per sempre 2:24 Track 24 Trionfi Amore 2:00 Track 25 Divo Amore 3:27 Track 26 Ballet music 0:54 Order This CD Now Using PayPal! Total 62:33 MP3 Sample Track Che faro senza Euridice? This particular aria was the one most associated with Kathleen Ferrier in her lifetime. It will give you an idea of the greatness of her voice, and the sound quality I was able to extract from the original shellac disks. 3:12 Prices & Ordering Information These CDs are $12.50 apiece. Shipping within the US is included. Shipping to Canada is an additional $2.50 for the first CD, and $1 for each additional CD shipped with the same order. International shipping is an additional $5.00 for the first CD, and $2 for each additional CD shipped with the same order. You can order online, using our secure PayPal links. If you don't have a PayPal account yet, sign up now using the link to the left, and you will get a $5 from PayPal for signing up. If you would prefer to send a check or money order by mail, drop me a line at... sales@vintageip.com and I will send you an order form that you can print out and mail in. Review Of This Recording I am at a slight disadvantage, not having heard the original Decca 78 rpm disks of this famous performance, though more than thirty years ago I owned a British budget label 33.3 rpm reissue (if memory serves, either via Ace of Clubs or Ace of Diamonds), probably yet another retread of the same disk-to-tape transfer that was originally issued early in the LP era. Since I have not had my vinyl library in more than a decade I cannot compare that transfer to VIP's new production; but my recollection was that the LP sound was more than a bit disappointing, with expectations running high for the vaunted Decca "full frequency range recording" technology of the post-war 78 rpm era. Worth's new transfer surprised me. My own copies of other late-forties British Decca 78 shellac disks were horribly crackly with soft passages virtually inundated in noise. Here, one scarcely notices the disk medium; yet the sheen of the lovely string section and the general transparency and delicacy of sound betoken "early hi fi" in its tasteful European manifestation, compared to the more blatant sound of American showpiece disks. I have talked with other transfer engineers about the best ways to remove the problematical British pressing defects, and they all insist that only the CEDAR process is effective (either in hardware or software form costing from ten to twenty-five thousand dollars!) Apparently VIP uses far less intrusive and complex means of reducing surface noise, but to my ear it is equally effective, for no sense of filtering or cut-off is apparent; nor is the timbre ever hollow or colored. Long time vinyl collectors will, however, recall and shudder at the severely over-bright reissues of Decca material from the era of the late forties and early fifties on their American subsidiary Richmond: sometimes the strident sound made one wince. Collectors of the sixties who cut their musical chops on such budget material- as did I- probably did not often have access to the flexibility of today's omnipresent equalizers to "tame" these troublesome disks. So you often found that reissues of 78 rpm material were either overly dull, or too bright and thin; hardly anything seemed the equal of a rare original, perfect shellac disk- if one were lucky to find it. Stephen Worth apparently has located such a set, for this "Orfeo" transfer seems- if my memory is correct- no less clean than the old British LP transfer, while having much greater depth, fullness, and clarity. I have read some comments that Worth- a specialist in restoring and maintaining old acoustical phonographs- has posted in usenet discussion lists about classic old vocal records. He has said (intelligently, I think) that there was a remarkable synergy in the best old mechanical players, and the records produced specifically FOR such devices: often the voices of grand old singers rang forth with amazing clarity, brilliance, and fullness, while sounding entirely artificial, constricted, and collapsed on many electrical transfers. Why is this? One suspects that many of the earlier analogue dubs to LP had been compressed and limited to reduce the wide dynamic range of acoustical disks and their occasionally anomalous "blasting" loud resonant notes. I also suspect that something of the sort has been done with *electrical* 78's, but that little was said to admit it. In listening closely to this "Orfeo", I seem to hear exceptionally natural vocal production, with an accurate tonal palette and a realistic dynamic curvature to the range of expression. There is simply no sense of the tiresome flattening of peaks- the small sudden natural rises in volume that are an important nuance of projection. Could there also be something of the odd, palpable, yet elusive "direct to disk" sound that Lincoln Mayorga (a piano specialist and recording guru) has studied, claiming that some of the best 78s have livelier dynamics than early tape? So, while you aren't slammed in the face with brilliant, explosive sibilance or even the same striking presence that EMI-HMV achieved when recording Kajanus in 1932 (as heard in Worth's transfer of that conductor's historic Sibelius), in this venerable Decca recording you have a genuine sonic treat of a more subtle nature. Musically the performance is well respected, and for its day was a notable achievement; while one must admit that no longer is it regarded as definitive. The general intimate ambience recalls the pre-war Glyndebourne opera recordings by Fritz Busch, with interpretations that featured no-nonsense tempi and lack of posturing and rhetoric. Don't expect a huge resonant "hall tone"; rather the ensemble is heard in a much more intimate music room, adding to the chamber-like, low key effect. After listening throughout with rapt attention- the first time in many years to this particular performance- I came away with a general feeling that with few exceptions, the pacing was a bit staid. Surprisingly though, when doing spot-checks against other recordings in my collection, I found that Stiedry conducts often with brisk tempi, generally surpassing the speed of Renato Fasano in his well-regarded RCA Victor stereo recording, and even that of the "HIP" modern version by Bernius with Tafelmusik, on Sony. It is the very lack of over-dramatizing in this Stiedry performance that gives it a solid and conservative sense of restraint in its totality. Individual shaping of key arias by the three soloists is musically and expressively vivid without being overly romantic or unidiomatic. There is a classicism and elegance to the performance that bewitches while (at times, for me) being a mite frustratingly held back. If I prefer to hear "Orfeo" with a more overtly extroverted and operatic style, it is due probably merely to my own conditioning. The edition, which must have seemed scholarly at the time of this recording, is the familiar 1889 compilation published by Ricordi, used well into the 1960's for most subsequent productions and records of the opera, though generally out of favor today. The instrumental style is non-romantic and chamber-scaled, while perhaps slightly blunting the bold character of the music that one hears in other performances, especially modern ones benefiting from an historic approach. But for its "1947 musical purity" one could not help but think of this reading as having much in common with British reverential oratorio style, the worst criticism I could offer. But in its favor, Ferrier is in truly splendid voice and there is nothing else the slightest bit weak or inadequate to cause discomfort or disappointment. I suspect, then, that this is the kind of document that wears well and yields its secrets and true treasure with long familiarity; I am glad I now have what I shall surely consider a definitive and truly satisfactory presentation, and one that I can look forward to hearing long into the future! --S. W. San Jose, CA Return to the VIP Records Home Page To subscribe to the VIP Records email list, send a message to... recordslist@vintageip.com This page is maintained by Stephen Worth. Its contents are copyrighted and may not be duplicated or redistributed in any manner without the prior written consent of the authors.