Adelina Patti: "Ah, non credea mirarti"

by Kate Callaghan

Kate Callaghan is currently studying the Graduate Diploma in Communication, majoring in film, at the University of Technology Sydney. She also has a Bachelor of Music (Performance) from the University of Sydney.

A discussion of "Ah, non credea mirarti" (Bellini: La Sonnambula), as recorded by Adelina Patti on acoustic phonograph 1906.

This recording by Patti is an interesting example of the ways in which listening changes, particularly since even in the contemporary context there was tension between what was heard and how it was given attention. Patti’s recordings were made primarily as documentation of what had been a fabulous voice and talent, rather than as (in the case of Caruso) a musical document. In that sense our hearing of Patti has not changed - we still view it as a document, or recording in the true sense. However, what we are listening for and indeed to has changed, and consequently, so has the listening itself.

Patti completed two recording sessions for the Gramophone Company; the second due to the success of the first. The release of these recordings was accompanied by a wave of publicity which influenced, of course, their presentation to the public and reflect contemporary attitudes not only to Patti, but to gramophone recording itself. By late 1905 when she made these recordings, the gramophone industry was improving the quality of materials and artists. The signing in 1902 of Caruso for an unprecedented £100, of Tamagno (creator of Verdi’s Otello) in 1903, and of Nellie Melba in 1904 demonstrate this, and no doubt influenced Patti’s final decision to record after two years of negotiations (Gelatt: 84-85). In addition, these records were priced as a luxury or quality product. Consider that a seven inch sold at 2s 6d (two shillings and sixpence); the ten inch "concert" record at five shillings; the Red Seal label series at ten shillings; and those of Caruso and Tamagno sold for twice this amount at the luxury price of £1. The divas Melba and Patti upped the price of their custom-labelled records by another shilling to one guinea (Gelatt: 84-85). In fact, when Victor introduced its first "quality" Red Seal records for sales in the Saturday Evening Post on 25 April 1903 the advertisement included a photo and endorsement by Adelina Patti herself (Cone: 306). A 1918 advertisement, which quotes French poet Verlaine illustrates the way in which Patti’s recordings were marketed: "Into every life comes the divine moment - l’heure exquise - though perhaps we do not realise it til we see the event paralleled in opera" (Koestenbaum: 55).

Patti’s recordings were presented as a luxury product, a piece of history. While we are still interested in the historical aspect of Patti’s recordings, we no longer view (hear) recordings as a luxury item, a demonstrable change in the history of listening. This is largely due to shifts in attitudes toward the playing of the recordings themselves, and not least because it is no longer new or inaccessible technology. We have moved from a culture of recording for representation to recording for repetition (Attali: 88). I came to these recordings for the repetition of stylistic practices, whereas her contemporaries heard the representation of Patti as a Voice.

Even though Patti spent almost all her career in England, she had an international reputation. In fact, Edison stated in 1890 that one advantage of his phonogram would be that "...the voice of Patti singing in England [could] thus be heard again on this side of the ocean, or preserved for future generations" (Edison quoted in Attali: 93-94). Add to this contemporary accounts by Verdi in 1877:

...an artist by nature, so perfect that perhaps there has never been her equal...A marvellous voice, a very pure style of singing, a stupendous artist with a charm and naturalness which no one else has (Verdi quoted in Cone: 129)

Or more interestingly Wolf in 1886 (twenty years prior to this recording) of a Patti farewell to Vienna:

..True, the tones pour silvery clear from the diva throat, but only on the level terrain of the middle voice. She can no longer climb the precipitous heights of the high E and above, nor roam those perilous paths from which trill upon trill once poured down on the delighted ears of enraptured listeners in a fine golden shower. That’s all a thing of the past. The fastidious taste of her singing, however, the agility and refinement in the execution of fiorature and mordents, excite admiration now as before (Wolf quoted in Cone 1993: 312).

The release of her records was accompanied by advertisements in 200 British newspapers; record shops announced "Patti is singing here today" (Gelatt: 86). This quotation represents a dramatic shift in how we listen in relation to these recordings. In 1906 the recording was considered to be a true representation of a famed voice, the voice of the latter part of the nineteenth century, and people wanted a part of it for themselves. Patti herself, according to Landon Ronald, who accompanied her recording sessions, recognised the truly representational quality of the recordings:

Obviously, Patti could recognise her own sound on these recordings. Further, the phonogram was clearly viewed to be an objective representation, demonstrated by the assertion that this was the first time Patti had heard her own voice, when surely she had been hearing it for some years!

We are so accustomed to listening to contemporary recordings - and I don’t think we listen to these believing them to be objective representations of a performance (or indeed voice) any longer - that we listen with an awareness that digital technology and take-after-take allow a notional "perfect" performance on recording. We are accustomed to hearing and listening for an uninterrupted acoustic quality, a frozen musical moment of the kind digital recording emphasises - sound without atmos. How interesting that, unlike Patti, we hear our voices on an answering machine or the like, and shrink from the sound, feeling it is not our voice at all. We do not have this same perception of the recording's representational objectivity. Instead, we expect an internally consistent objectivity from the recording, where the recorded material is acoustically "pure", as is its reproduction. How then do we listen, when the material, the music does not exist in an acoustic vacuum - when we are aware of the recording itself? We have in part resolved this question for ourselves by continuing to "allow" for this kind of acoustic variance in live performance, where we still seek l’heure exquise from behind a column or accompanied by aeroplane noise, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground listening to The Three Tenors.

A great deal of how Patti’s recording are heard today relates to questions of a technical nature. Although her records were released at 78 rpm, this was by no means a standard for recording, and it was not the practice with early wax recording to take note of the recording speed. This is translated into a musical question since a deviation of 4 rpm is equal to a semitone in pitch. This problem was recognised at the time, and early Melba recordings printed the key in which selections were sung on the label, presumably as some kind of disclaimer (Cone 1993: 313). Further, Patti’s niece, Louise Barili, present at the recording sessions noted "How unsatisfactory it is that when you want a thing in a high key it alters the tempo so that things go at a terrific speed, and to lower it everything must drag" (Barili quoted in Cone: 245). She goes on to say "Still it is very wonderful, though not artistic", an interesting aside since we now hear these recordings as not at all "wonderful" in a technological sense, and rather more "artistic" in a stylistic sense. How then do we answer the question of pitch? Contemporary audiences of Patti’s could have altered the speeds of their gramophones to their own taste, should the replay seem distorted, which would explain why noone noted the speeds - the gramophone was still to a degree an open system. Now, however, the advent of re-mastery takes the decision away from the listener to the recording artist who decides on speed and consequently pitch. Further, the music is heard within a familiar acoustic framework - the CD - rather than its original medium, the record. [Perhaps a record played on an acoustic phonogram - on the same instrument with which it was recorded - was a more "internally consistent" sound than a re-mastered CD. It would be interesting, if the materials were available, to compare.] The Pearl recording that I have used is in G minor/B^b major, but the music is written in the key of A minor/C major. Pearl used a recording speed of 74 rpm: Cone suggests a speed of 76.60 as used by EMI to be preferable (Cone 1993: 314). So we have the question - in what key did Patti record the aria? It is not hard to believe it was recorded in a lower key than the original, due to her age. How does that affect what we are listening to, what would I hear in her performance at 76.60 rpm that I did not hear at 74.00 rpm? Clearly someone is mastering the pitch, and the student listening for Patti’s stylistic practices should listen critically since issues such as vocal register changes are effected by pitch.

The contrast in recording techniques from 1905-06 to the present is clear, but Patti’s recordings themselves vary from others of the time, primarily because she insisted on being recorded in her own home. Sound technician Fred Gaisberg recorded in his diary that "With her natural Italian temperament she was given to flashing movement and to acting her parts. It was my job to pull her back when she made those beautiful attacks on the high notes" (Gaisberg: 87). Her niece also recorded that "Adelina stood on a small movable platform which, for shading, was moved toward or away from the recording machine...Father...had to play with the piano elevated, high up, on boxes. Papa was told not to do any shading, as it would not record" (Barili, quoted in Cone: 246). It is interesting how "shading" was achieved by physical, rather than technical manipulations, and in this sense is truly a more "authentic" recording of opera, where the physical manipulations of singers on stage does indeed affect both the performance and their singing, and consequently what we hear. Further, due to the limited resources, there was usually only one or two takes, leading to a more spontaneous performance.

In 1973 EMI Records published a special limited edition of Adelina Patti recordings on four 12 inch long playing sides (Cone 1993: 312). In 1974 Steane compared Patti’s rendition of "Ah, non credea mirarti" to that of five other eminent singers recordings, and considered hers to be the most richly varied of all (Steane: 17). He is still moved to criticise however, that "...one still veers between laughter and rage at Patti’s records" feeling that her "professionalism" should have warned her against recording so late in her career. But why should it? Indeed, it took the Gramophone Company some two years to negotiate a contract with Patti, which was precisely due to her "professionalism", and her concern that the Gramophone was unproven technology. In fact, it would seem the opposite was the case. Her recordings sold well precisely because they were viewed/heard as a "true" document of her voice - and the public was more than aware that "the voice" was 62 years old. Further illustration of this attitude of preservation is that the records were immediately added to the archives of the British Museum and the Paris Opera; - they were clearly understood to be important documents by her contemporaries. While Steane is not alone in his criticism of her voice (Bernard Shaw and Wolf both commented prior to her recordings that Patti was in decline), it is an interesting reflection of how our listening habits have changed. We are not interested in hearing anything non-professional, anything which is a document for its own sake, we seek rather some kind of musical purity.

At this point the history of listening becomes personal. How do we separate the material, finding the bumps and cracks, the non-standardised speed, the way in which the recording itself mirrors some passage of time, from the objective musical truth. Do we hear some of the agility for which Patti was famous, and some of the decaying vibrato of a voice past its prime only because I know that is how her contemporaries heard her? How can we really try to hear the "style", if unaware of the decisions that have been made by the record companies, the recording technicians? Then there is the question of re-recording - because, hearing this object today we hear more voices than that of Patti. There is, as I have already mentioned, the speed/pitch. On top of her voice lies the question of whether its "wobbly" quality is merely that of an opera singer; that of a 62 year old opera singer; or that of an old recording. Is it just the embarrassing "convulsive vibrato" (Koestenbaum) of a great and famous Diva? Is it the convulsive wobble of the needle on the wax cylinder, which contemporary accounts prove was excessive when Patti sang high notes?

In fact, I believe that we hear all of these voices and should also try to listen to them all. I therefore argue that both relativist - issues of speed, pitch and age enrich the object, and we have historical explanations why - and an absolutist - this document does adhere to the entropic model that things decay over time, and in these absolute terms there is no doubt in my mind that Patti is an interesting singing technician - modes of listening are helpful. So my personal listening shifts reflect those macro shifts from Patti’s time to ours: in how her sound is presented, played, recorded and given attention. The history of listening will of course continue to shift as do our concepts of privileged sounds.

Bibliography

Attali, J "Repeating" from Noise: The Political Economy of Music, in Theory and History of Literature, Volume 16, translated Brian Massumi, Manchester University Press, UK, 1985.

Cone, J F Adelina Patti Queen of Hearts, Amadeus Press, Portland, USA.1993.

Gaisberg, F W Music on Record, Robert Hale Limited, London, 1948.

Gelatt, R The Fabulous Phonograph: The Story of the Gramophone from Tin Foil to High Fidelity, Cassell & Co Ltd, London, 1956.

Koestenbaum, W The Queen’s Throat: Opera Homosexuality and the Mystery of Desire, Vintage Books, Random House Inc, New York, 1994.

Moran, W R "The Recorded Legacy of Adelina Patti" in Adelina Patti Queen of Hearts, Cone, Vintage Books, Random House Inc, New York, 1993.

Scott, M "The Old School" in The Record of Singing to1914, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd, London, 1977.

Steane, J B The Grand Tradition: Seventy Years of Singing on Record, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd, London, 1974.

Welch, WL and Burt, LBS From Tinfoil to Stereo The Acoustic Years of the Recording Industry 1877-1929, University Press of Florida, USA, 1994.

Discography

Adelina Patti: 1843-1919, Pavilion Records Ltd, 1988, Pearl Gemm, CD 9312.

Amelita Galli-Curci in Opera and Song, Conifer Records Limited, 1993, CDHD 201.

Joan Sutherland: Coloratura Spectacular, Decca Record Company Limited, 1988, Decca 417814-2.

Tetrazzini: Prima Voce, Nimbus Records Ltd, 1990, NI 7808.