Stars of David: Audio Encyclopedia 002

 

Reviewed by Mike Leone

 

 

A Century of Jewish Singers

 

The second volume of Mike Richter's Audio Encyclopedia, Stars of David, is certainly one of the most ambitious vocal collections in any format to date. Like the previously reviewed Men of Empire, the recordings derive principally from the collection of Harold Byrnes, here complemented by half-a-dozen or so other collections. While it might be unfair to compare this disc to the four-volume Record of Singing, because of that collection's different intention and time frame covered, I found this collection to be as invaluable and possibly even more enjoyable.

 

Of course, the title Stars of David is an obvious reference to the Jewish faith. And while David is described as a harpist rather than a singer in the Bible, he is listed as composer of 58 of the Psalms, not to mention another Psalm that is embedded in the text of the Book of Chronicles. It doesn't require too great a leap of the imagination to think that David, like many of the artists represented on this disc, was an accomplished singer as well.

 

The inspiration for Stars of David came from a couple of folks listening to a private recording of Cantor Jacob Konigsberg and reflecting on the many great voices that never made it to the operatic stage because of the religious convictions of the owners of those voices. From there, it was an easy jump for them to start searching out recordings of other great cantors who may or may not have devoted at least some of their talents to the world of classical music and opera, and then to those who had greater or lesser careers in the classical vocal field.

 

The description of the disc on its home page modestly describes it as containing 'almost 600 selections of over 150 artists'. In actuality, there are 614 recordings, according to the Philips Expanium MP3-CD player, by a total of 190 Jewish artists (not to mention the non-Jewish supporting singers). Among these 190 artists are some who have or have had very prominent careers, such as Maria Ivogün, Regina Resnik, Jan Peerce, Robert Merrill, Friedrich Schorr and Mark Reizen, and a large number of singers who were less well known, such as Albert da Costa, perhaps best remembered today as the third of Birgit Nilsson's three Tristans at the December 28, 1959, performance of Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera. There are also a few who are almost completely unknown, such as Mordechai Bauman, who is mainly remembered today as having made the first recording of six of Charles Ives's songs, which are included on this disc. Among the cantors, some have performed only in the cantorial field, the most prominent being Cantor Josef (a k a Yossele) Rosenblatt, while others, such as Cantor Richard Allen, have sung both religious and secular music.

 

The criterion for inclusion on the disc was simple: the singer had to be of Jewish descent. Some speculation was involved in the case of two of the singers, Dorothy Jardon and Hipólito Lázaro, although the evidence in each case is strong that the singer in question was Jewish. If the evidence on a particular singer's Jewish descent was weak, the singer was not included.

 

The disc itself is very user-friendly, especially so since the VINAMP player does not default to 'Always on Top' (I normally disable the 'Always on Top' mode on those discs in the series that default to it), and the listener accesses the pieces on the disc one selection at a time. However, there are a few instances where larger groups of selections can be accesses with one click of the button, such as with the Ives songs mentioned above. Other similar groups are Shostakovich's Six Spanish Songs in a 1981 performance by Artur Eizen, a complete Dichterliebe by Alexander Kipnis, a 1960 Kindertotenlieder by Hermann Schey under Rafael Kubelik, a 1950 Russian-language Schöne Müllerin by Georgy Vinogradov, and an undated recital by Igor Gorin.

 

Even if all there were to this fantastic disc were the music, there would be much more to review here than I could possibly cover in an article of this size and scope. So, since I cannot acknowledge even a fraction of the wonderful items on this disc, I'm throwing my hands up in the air, and will describe just a few of the pieces that really stood out for me.

 

One of the better-known numbers on the disc, at least to fans of private recordings, is 'Sillsiana', featuring of course Beverly Sills. This recording, which has long circulated in the disc and tape underground, is fully deserving of the fame it has acquired. The piece is actually a compendium by Roland Gagnon of selections from a number of operas in which Madame Sills appeared, with one or two items that she probably never performed publicly thrown in. It begins with the orchestral introduction to 'Una voce poco fa' from Il barbiere di Siviglia, but then the first sung words are actually the beginning of 'Grossmächtige Prinzessin' from Ariadne auf Naxos; 'Una voce poco fa' is pretty much forgotten from that point on, other than a couple of one-note references to it that Barbiere and coloratura soprano fans will recognize instantly. It would be unfair to newcomers to the piece to give away any more of it than that; suffice it to say that the surprises keep coming, each more outrageous and more amusing than the one preceding. I would have enjoyed being one of the fortunate ones who got to see Sills sing this piece in person. She is also represented on this disc, by the way, with 'Myself I shall adore' from Handel's Semele and the original 1912 version of the aforementioned 'Grossmächtige Prinzessin', longer, higher and more intricate than the version commonly performed today.

 

Probably my favorite selection on the disc is a 1963 rendition by Roberta Peters of 'Glitter and Be Gay' from Bernstein's Candide. In this performance, Peters strikes a perfect balance between humor and pathos, and her crystal clear diction is much better than we normally have come to expect from high-flying coloratura sopranos. I have played through this disc twice now - no small feat in itself - and I can never get past this number without playing it several times.

 

Another exciting soprano represented here is Marisa Galvany, whose 'Allor che i forti corrono' from Verdi's Attila is never less than thrilling. Interestingly, while several of the better-known Verdi works only receive one selection apiece on this disc, Attila is represented by two items, since we also have Igor Gorin in a live 'Dal immortali vertici', an aria he also recorded commercially. The notes point out that Gorin, a singer largely forgotten today, was so popular in the 1930s and early 1940s that he was able to dictate his recorded repertoire to Victor and thus was able to record a number of items that probably nobody else at the time could have.

 

But it's not just the high-lying or the famous singers who provide pleasure here. To give just one example of the other end of the aural spectrum, we have Adolf Lieban's recording of Nicolai's delightful 'Als Büblein klein' which descends - not often enough - into the lower reaches of the bass range.

 

There are some rather unusual pieces on the disc too. One of the stranger items on here is Russian tenor Vladimir Rosing's recording of Cesar Cui's song Famine. Normally, one would not expect a song with a name such as 'Famine' to be anything but serious, and that turns out to be the case. However, Rosing's spoken introduction to the song, in part because of the resemblance of his speaking voice to that of Peter Lorre, is unintentionally comic and indeed steals the show from the song itself. Among other items by Rosing on this disc is a sung version of Saint-Saëns 'Danse macabre' which is, well, macabre.

 

But probably first place for bizarrité goes to a 1939 radio broadcast of Jan Kiepura singing 'Di quella pira' from Il trovatore. Now, there is nothing particularly unusual about Jan Kiepura's singing of the two verses of the cabaletta; in fact it's quite good: he's got a good-sized spinto voice with lots of squillo, is as accurate as most in the staccato passages, and has a strong high C. But the first time I played this recording over my little computer speakers, I noticed that there was something a bit strange about the orchestra. Listening to the performance again over headphones I discovered the source of the strangeness: rather than an orchestra, there is a chorus backing Kiepura up with 'oom ta-da-da-da oom-pah, oom ta-da-da-da oom-pah'. The effect is more than slightly jarring, especially in the places where the tenor himself is not singing.

 

Of course, a disc devoted to Jewish singers just would not be complete without performances of a few selections from Halèvy's La juive, and indeed we have four numbers from the opera represented by a total of seven recordings. What is most unusual about the selections is that only one of the seven is in French: three are in German, two in Russian, and one, Cantor Joseph Shlisky's 'Rachel, quand du Seigneur' is in Yiddish. Shlisky, another strong spinto tenor, came very close to singing on the professional stage, having signed with the San Carlo Opera for performances of La bohème, La juive and Tosca, but he passed on the opportunity and continued to sing only in the cantorial field. For the record, the one recording from La juive on this disc that is actually in French is Edward Lankow's 1927 recording of 'Si la rigueur'; the aria itself is also represented by a 1908 recording by Lankow in German, while the bass himself additionally appears in the two arias from Die Zauberflöte. Once again it is the 1908 recording (of 'In diesen heilígen Hallen') that is in German, while the 1927 recording (of 'O Isis und Osiris') is in French.

 

Needless to say, there are a number of cantorial items on the disc. The most operatic of all is probably 'Ad Heino Asorunu' sung by Cantor Moshe Kusevitsky, which contains, as the notes point out, an aria, a cadenza with flute obbligato and a concluding cabaletta. The recording must have been made fairly late in Kusevitsky's career, as he died in 1966, and the sound of the recording is quite modern. Going back a few years, there is Cantor Sholom Katz's 'El Mole Rachamim', generally a prayer for the dead, but performed live in Czechoslovakia in 1951 as a prayer for those who perished in the concentration camps. And of course, Cantor Josef Rosenblatt, the 'cantor of cantors', is represented here by two selections. While the notes indicate that the reason for Rosenblatt's fame 'remains elusive to those of us who never heard him in person', I must say that he has long been a favorite of mine. His voice is certainly less traditionally beautiful than those of many of his colleagues, but he is a masterful musician with an interesting if not exactly beautiful head tone, and the slightly craggy qualities of his voice perfectly suit the austerity of the music that he sang. There is also the curio of Cantor Sophie Kurtzer, a so-called female cantor from the early part of the century, when women cantors were confined to vaudeville rather than being heard in the synagogue. Times have changed, however, and the notes indicate that Deborah Katchko-Zimmerman, the daughter of Cantor Adolf Katchko (1887-1958), who is represented on the disc, was the first woman appointed as a full-time cantor in a conservative synagogue (Cantor Katchko likewise had a son who also became a cantor).

 

Since most of the cantorial items on the disc do not have a listed composer, they are most easily accessible as a group by going to the list that indexes the selections by composer, and then proceeding to the bottom of the list, entitled '(No composer identified)'. The rest of the selections are of course listed alphabetically by composer and the individual operatic selections are given in alphabetical order. I would have preferred to see the selections in the order they appear in the opera, at least for the works where this information is readily known. This would have seemed a little more natural to me, and would have also helped prevent such an error as 'Dite alla giovine . . . Imponete' (included for Leonard Warren's contribution, with Eleanor Steber as Violetta) popping up in the middle of the Trovatore selections, rather than among the Traviata selections where it of course belongs.

 

In any event, I think the preferable way of accessing the selections on the disc is by name of the performer. Using this approach, one can find interesting and useful biographical sketches (most fairly brief) on each singer. The notes under each singer include the creator's records that he or she made: Leopold Demuth in a 1908 recording of an aria from Goldmark's Wintermärchen; Grete Forst in an undated recording of another aria from the same opera; Dorothy Jardon in a 1920 recording of Silberta's song 'Jahrzeit'; Jean Lassalle, the greatest French baritone of his time, in a 1903 recording of 'Promesse de mon avenir' from Massenet's Le Roi de Lahore; Léon Melchissedec, another great French baritone and the singer with the earliest birth date (1843) in this collection, in Capulet's aria from Gounod's Romèo et Juliette; Maurice Renaud, yet another great French baritone, in a 1903 recording of an aria from Reyer's Sigurd; and perhaps the most famous of this group, Richard Tauber, in an aria from Léhar's Giuditta conducted by the composer. Also, Margit Bokor's recording of a duet from Strauss's Arabella features Viorica Ursuleac, the creator of the title role.

 

The notes contain interesting and sometimes touching anecdotes concerning some of the singers. For example, there was Jozef Mann, a singer I had never heard of, but who was supposedly being considered as Caruso's successor at the Met, but who died four months after Caruso did, at the age of 38; Anna Meitschik, a contralto whose voice was so deep that she once sang Rubinstein's Demon, a baritone role, when a colleague became ill; and Nataliya Shpiller, a favorite of Stalin's who sang private recitals for him regularly at the Kremlin. One of the more poignant stories concerns an elderly, poor and sick man who showed up in a New York City Russian music store in the early 1960s carrying a batch of privately pressed LPs and who asked the store owner to sell them on consignment. He said that he would return later to retrieve the money and to bring a second LP, but never did. The man was more than likely Arnoldo Georgewsky, a Russian tenor from the earlier part of the century and the singer on the LP.

 

The notes also describe artistic discrimination against certain singers because of their background, but of course the saddest aspect of these biographies is the documentation of those singers who suffered or died as a result of the politics surrounding World War II, and I would like to honor these singers by listing them:

 

Richard Breitenfeld (1869-1942), Bohemian baritone, who died in the concentration camp in Theresienstadt; Giusppina Finzi-Magrini (1878-1944), Italian soprano, who went into hiding under a false name and died in poverty in Turin; Grete Forst (1880-194?), Austrian soprano , who was placed in a transport to a camp in Minsk in 1942 and was never heard of again; Henrietta Gottlieb (1884-1943), German soprano, who died in a concentration camp; Eugenia Lopez-Nunes (1883-?), Italian contralto, who disappeared in the mid-thirties, presumably as a result of the political situation in Europe; Juan Luria (1862-1942?), Polish baritone, who at the age of 79 was sent to the concentration camp in Auschwitz in 1942 and never heard of again; Ottilie Metzger (1878-1943?), German contralto, who was sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz in 1943, and never heard from again; Theodore Ritch (1894-1943), Russian tenor, who was arrested in 1943 and died on a train headed for a concentration camp in Poland; Josef Schmidt (1904-1942), Rumanian tenor, who died of tuberculosis in an internment camp in Switzerland after crossing the border from France.

 

Of course there were Jewish singers from the period who lived in other parts of the world and thus were safe from the Nazis. Still others, such as Julius Lieban, Berta Morena and Hermann Schramm, did, for whatever reason, manage to stay in Germany and remain unmolested through the war. Tenor Miklos Gafni survived his death sentence in a Hungarian concentration camp because the camp commandant was a music lover (Gafni would later record the first complete La juive, sponsored by a Jewish-American organization). And Austrian tenor Richard Tauber was so popular that the Nazis were willing to make an exception for him, but he chose to leave Germany in 1933 anyway, probably a wise move on his part.

 

One of the happier aspects of the biographies is their documentation of the number of instances where singing has been a family affair. Thus, we have several sets of brothers: Julius and Adolf Lieban; Moshe and David Kusevitsky; and Jan and Wladyslaw Kiepura. We have one instance of a father and son who were both cantors: father Cantor Josef Rosenblatt and son Cantor Henry Rosenblatt. And we have several instances where a father or grandfather was a cantor and the child or grandchild became a famous singer: father Cantor Mayer Schorr and son Friedrich Schorr; grandfather Cantor Savel Kwartin and granddaughter Evelyn Lear; and Cantor Sidney Shicoff and son Neil Shicoff.

 

The sources of the recordings vary from early cylinders (recordings of Selma Kurz, Josephine Jacoby and Marie Rappold) and Edison Diamond Discs (Marie Rappold once again), through 78s, LPs and in-house private recordings. Nevertheless, the sound quality of the recordings is for the most part quite high, considering the source material, but obviously not up to current standards. The few items with noticeably poorer sound quality are generally taken from Vitaphone films, with the Act IV Trovatore duet with real-life married couple Rosa Raisa and Giacomo Rimini being an especially obvious example. The notes concerning the particular recordings do warn of poor recording quality.

 

Overall, the presentation is quite good, with photographs of a number of the singers included on the respective biographical pages. There are occasional typographical errors in the texts. Also, the composer index indicates that the 1947 'Infelice' from Verdi's Ernani, sung by George London, is introduced by Robert Merrill, but I could not find any such introduction.

 

As an added bonus - as if one were needed with all this vocal largesse - there are illustrations of 24 of the 78rpm record labels, all very attractive and colorful. The labels can be expanded by clicking on them.

 

Stars of David is probably one of my favorites of the CD-ROMs Mike Richter has published so far, because of the variety of the musical styles represented, the many wonderful singers included, and the extensive notes and background information. I feel the same sense of loss that the producers of this disc did for those singers who chose to deploy their considerable talents away from the operatic and concert stage, but at the same time a lot of respect for the integrity of those singers. So this is an extremely enjoyable disc, and I certainly hope to see Mike Richter presenting more offerings from the Harold Byrnes collection. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go listen to 'Sillsiana' and 'Glitter and Be Gay' again . . .

 

'Stars of David' is a CD-ROM published by Mike Richter, AE002 US$ 14.95.

 

Related website:

 

Additional information and a source for ordering can be found at Mike Richter www.mrichter.com/

 

© Mike Leone, 20 June 2001

Houston, Texas

lionman299@yahoo.com