Emma Eames (soprano) - Dopo (Tosti) (1911) скачать в хорошем качестве

Emma Eames (soprano) - Dopo (Tosti) (1911)

Emma Eames sings Tosti's 'Dopo,' with orchestra, recorded at Camden on 27 November 1911. Eames was a 'pure' soprano of the Marchesi school: the type of voice that Victor had great difficulty in capturing well. Part of the problem was that Victor's acoustic process was not good at capturing the higher frequencies, and shorn of their overtones the voices of pure sopranos sound disembodied. The other problem with the Victor process is that it had a couple of very nasty resonances at around F5 and G5 (or thereabouts, depending on the particular recording). When the soprano hit each of the notes in question, some part of the acoustic plumbing started vibrating in sympathy, with the result that the notes took on a very unpleasant 'hooty' character. Why this problem wasn't identified and rectified is quite beyond me, because even with acoustic reproduction it is obvious: and no such problem affected Gramophone Company recordings. The two familiar resonances were present in this disc. The problem it causes can't be fixed, but the unpleasant sound that it causes can be tamed somewhat by notch filtering at the identified frequencies. 'Dopo' was recorded at Eames' second last recording session. (The last took place on the following day). She was only 46, but the voice has a matronly quality about it, as well as an edginess on the higher notes. Some of this can be explained by the limitations of the Victor acoustic process, but Eames was in fact at the end of her career. Despite this, there is some lovely singing here, and I think the record is a rather special one. From Wikipedia: Emma Eames (August 13, 1865 – June 13, 1952) was an American soprano... The daughter of an international lawyer, Eames was born in Shanghai, China, and raised in Portland and Bath in the American state of Maine. The promising quality of her voice was recognised early by her mother and she received singing lessons as a small girl... Later she took voice lessons in Paris with...Mathilde Marchesi. It was noted in the press at the time of Marchesi's death in 1913 that Eames had praised the tuition she received from that teacher. Subsequently, however, she chose to downplay Marchesi's influence on her vocal technique. Eames made her professional operatic debut in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette at the Paris Opéra's headquarters, the Palais Garnier, in 1889. She would perform the role of Juliette many other times during the next two years, while adding other leading French-opera parts to her repertoire...She left the company in 1891... On November 9, 1891, Eames made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera on tour in Chicago...as Elsa in Wagner's Lohengrin. She quickly became a favourite with Met audiences. She would perform regularly at the Met in a variety of operas until 1909, when a dispute with management precipitated her departure. Eames also made a number of successful appearances at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. She sang there intermittently from 1891 to 1901...Eames also sang in Madrid and fulfilled lucrative singing engagements at Monaco's chic Monte Carlo Opera during the 1890s... Eames gave her farewell operatic performances during the 1911–12 seasons with the Boston opera company. She then undertook a series of concert tours of the United States, appearing on the recital platform for the last time in 1916, by which time her voice was showing signs of deterioration... During her prime, Eames possessed an opulently beautiful, aristocratic and expertly trained soprano voice. It began as a purely lyric instrument but increased in size over time...Music critics occasionally took her to task, however, for the coldness of her interpretations and aloof stage manner. Eames was reportedly unhappy with the way that she sounded on the series of commercial 78-rpm recordings she made in 1905-1911 for the Victor Talking Machine Company, and Victor technicians were equally unhappy with her imperious attitude in the studio. Victor engineer Harry O. Sooy acidly remarked in his memoirs 'Mme. Eames last recording date was April 14, 1911 [in fact 28 November 1911], and the recording staff has not had one minute’s unrest because she does not make any more records for the V. T. M. Co.' In 1939, however, she appeared on an American radio broadcast and selected some of her better recordings to play to listeners, speaking with little modesty about their merits... Eames was a proud, handsome woman. She married twice, firstly to a society painter named Julian Russell Story, and then to the famous concert baritone Emilio de Gogorza...Both marriages ended in divorce... Paris was Eames' main place of residence during the 1920s and early '30s. She moved to New York City in 1936, where she gave vocal tuition...Eames died in 1952, after a protracted illness, aged 86 in her Manhattan home... I transferred this recording from Victrola 88344.