Julián Biel - 1903 excerpt from La Juive (RARE!) скачать в хорошем качестве

Julián Biel - 1903 excerpt from La Juive (RARE!)

Julián Biel (1869-1948) began life as a painter in his native Spain. He embarked upon an operatic career at the relatively late age of thirty with a debut in Bologna as Manrico in Il Trovatore. Biel made a tremendous impression on audiences in a very short time, with appearances in major houses in Milan, St. Petersburg, Paris, London, Brussels, Lisbon, Barcelona, Buenos Aires and others. His repertoire included Radames in Aïda, Vasco in L'Africaine, Don Alvaro in La Forza del Destino, John of Leyden in Le Prophète and the title role in Gounod's Faust. It was during a 1905 performance of Faust in Barcelona that an actual sword fight broke out between Biel and the baritone singing Valentin that night. The tenor was injured badly enough to require a brief hospitalization and the rest of the performance was cancelled. A few years later, Biel reportedly began displaying signs of a mental breakdown. He withdrew from the stage in 1910, albeit temporarily. Biel retired for good in 1917 and returned to Barcelona, where he opened a voice studio. He died in total obscurity in 1948. The entire recorded output of Julián Biel (listed as "Giuliano Biel" on the labels) is limited to ten discs made in 1903 for the Gramophone and Typewriter Company in Milan. The recordings, consisting of arias from Il Trovatore, La Forza del Destino, Aïda, Andrea Chenier and others, are as rare as hen's teeth. Here is one of them, "Rachel, quand du Seigneur" (sung in Italian as "Rachele, allor che Iddio") from Halévy's La Juive...aka "L'Ebrea" in its Italian translation.