PUBLISHED RECORDINGS:
The Commercial Recordings of Beniamino Gigli
By John R. Bolig
Preface and Introduction
Beniamino Gigli was the first of many tenors who was described as “The next Caruso.” His career began shortly before the death of the great tenor, and he was a major attraction at a number of major opera houses, and in concert, for the next 25 years. He was also featured in a number of motion pictures, and especially as a recording artist. Critics are in agreement that he was blessed with a beautiful voice although some accuse him of being too emotional at times, and others are not terribly impressed by his choice of recorded material. I try not to be judgmental about such things, but I can testify that there are some Gigli records that I never tire of hearing and I cannot think of any other singer who sang them as well as he did.
There are several discographies of Beniamino Gigli’s recorded legacy. He enjoyed a passionate group of followers over his lengthy career. It should be noted that this is only a list of recordings that were made by the Gramophone Company (HMV) in Europe and by the Victor company in the United States. Gigli never made a commercial recording for any other company, but there are other recordings from radio broadcasts, and he participated in and sang in a number of motion pictures.
There are several features of this discography that differ from some of the earlier attempts. I list every known HMV and Victor recording whether or not it was published, and I describe the disposition of each unpublished recording if those data were available in legitimate archives. I also attempted to identify every alternative catalog number for each published recording.
It is also interesting that recordings of his voice can be heard in the background of some motion pictures and television shows. Those are almost always transcriptions taken from his Victor and HMV records. Obviously, those could not be listed.
I was able to identify over 1,100 commercial recordings that he made between 1918 and 1955, many of which were unpublished alternative versions. Unpublished takes often show up in collections, and many of those have been issued on long-playing records and on compact discs, but there are probably more yet to be found and published. Those elusive recordings are listed in the discography and extant copies are noted if they have been identified.
Record companies would process most, if not all, of the recordings attempted by artists, and all of the variations would be sent to the artist who was expected to select one and approve it for release. They often kept the unapproved versions and they frequently gave them away to friends and family members. Quite a few of Gigli’s unpublished recordings are extant.
I tried to locate and report data found in the original papers of HMV and Victor. I was fortunate to have documentation of HMV recordings that were prepared by the late Alan Kelly, and especially those that were updated by John Milmo in London. I personally made many visits to the Victor archive that is housed in the Sony Building in New York City, and I am grateful that David Seubert and Sam Brylawski of the DAHR project made their files available to me. DAHR is the Discography of American Historical Recordings, but Gigli was an international artist and most of his records were sold here by The Victor Talking Machine Company and subsequently by RCA Victor. John Banks, a distinguished collector, not only examined records at my request, but he made a number of excellent suggestions concerning the deathless prose found in this paper.
Gigli remained in Europe during World War II and he made records in Germany and Italy. Some of the documentation for German and Italian wartime sessions that has survived is fragmentary and cannot be verified. He also made four records in Brazil. The Victor plant there released several other Gigli recordings pressed from HMV stampers, and the Victor Company in the United States released several records there, but not in the United States. I am not certain that I located all of the record numbers that were released in Brazil. It was not for a lack of trying.
As mentioned above, a number of other discographers have completed lists of Gigli’s records and some of them are simply not complete. Or they only feature records that were actually published. Some were written before more accurate data came to light. I examined, and set aside most of them, and relied primarily on first hand data found in the EMI and Victor Archives rather than perpetuate errors or omissions. I am indebted to Gary Galo for providing me with descriptions of Gigli records that were reissued in compact disc and long-playing formats.
I also relied heavily on the online site IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project) to document the lyricists and composers of the operas and songs listed in the discography. Record companies, for a variety of reasons, truncated the information about compositions that were printed on labels. It was my intention that anybody wanting to find sheet music for the music would know exactly what could be found on a Gigli record. I was about 90% successful. For some reason, lyricists are frequently listed by their last name, or not at all.
Gigli participated in nine complete performances, eight operas and a mass, that were originally released on 78-RPM records. I listed those parts that included Gigli in the discography. The nine complete performances are listed in the appendix.
The Discography
The discography is organized chronologically to show Gigli’s development as an artist. The takes recorded on a given day are listed by matrix number and take number. Where known, the disposition of takes is shown, and every version of a published recording is listed. Many of Gigli’s recordings were released in different countries with different catalog numbers. Some were reissued by HMV or by Victor with new catalog numbers. Several were originally published in Brazil or Argentina, and some reissues were published in Ireland. Reissues by collector’s organizations, including a few that were released illegally in Hungary, are listed in the discography because they were pressed from legitimate stampers rather than transcribed stampers.
During World War II the RCA Victor Company stored many of their metal parts and discovered later that some had deteriorated badly while in storage. Several of Gigli’s recordings with alternative take numbers were substituted for the originally approved versions, and collectors or scholars may wish to hear both versions. It is not unusual to see an earlier version as a replacement for a recording that had been in Victor catalogs prior to the war. There are some indicators that can be seen on record surfaces.
Gigli’s earliest recordings made between 1918 and 1924 were recorded acoustically. The artist would stand in front of a megaphone shaped horn and a small group of musicians would be placed at varying distances from the horn while the recording was made. There was no way to engineer or edit a recording other than the placement of the musicians. The results were of low fidelity and the horn favored certain types of voices and instruments. As a tenor, Gigli was among those who recorded favorably. Many of Gigli’s records during the acoustic era were initially issued as one-sided records in America and in Europe. Record companies had been producing double-sided records for decades, but Victor and HMV stubbornly refused to issue two-sided records by their classically trained “Red Seal” artists until late in 1923.
Records made before 1925 can vary in playback speed, and a variable speed turntable is recommended if a record is to be played in proper pitch. Victor and its affiliates advertised the speed of 78-RPM but, even after 1925, they usually recorded at a slightly slower speed. Simply stated, a record played slightly faster will not offend the human ear, and a record played too slowly will sound flat.
It is also a fact that Victor and the Gramophone Company made records with different groove configurations, and there are styli available that will produce an ideal sound. Toward the end of 1924, recording companies began to use microphones and electrical equipment to make records, and the results were an enormous improvement. Orchestras and choruses could be recorded. And tenors like Gigli sounded remarkably more human, and better. Only one microphone was used, but record companies often connected it to a second recording machine. In doing so they created take 1 and take 1A, or take 2 and take 2A, etc. Usually, the alternative takes were not processed, but they would have sounded exactly the same as take 1 or take 2 if that had been used. For that reason, I list only the take from the recording device that was used.
Electrical recording technology introduced a new element. Recordings could be edited by engineers. Or, they could be transcribed to produce a quieter version, or for any other reason to improve upon the original take. When Gigli’s recordings were transcribed those versions are listed and usually noted in the discography.
Several of Gigli’s final recordings were simultaneously recorded on wax, on tape and even stereophonically. Those that were issued are listed in the discography. However, the matrix numbers for the stereophonic recordings are problematic. They were assigned in this discography to recordings that actually did have wax matrices because they were the same recordings. To summarize, Gigli’s recording career spanned every technological improvement made from the acoustic to the stereophonic era. He also appeared in a number of motion pictures and on radio broadcasts, but those are not the subject of this disc
The Records as Artifacts
The Gramophone Company usually pressed the full matrix number in the space next to the label on their records, and the Victor Company also pressed the HMV matrix numbers next to the label. Unfortunately, Victor did not press their own matrix numbers on the surfaces of their records. However, Victor did press take numbers to the left of their labels and HMV pressed Victor take numbers upside-down to the right of their labels.
Why is this important? Simply stated, if an artist approved of a second or third take, collectors and musical scholars would probably want to listen to every possible version.
The catalog number is customarily pressed in the space above the label, and two-sided records made by Victor are marked A and B for each side. I never list those alphabetical characters because one only has to turn the record over to see what is on the other side. If the label says “Part 1”, play it first.
Both companies also pressed characters on the surface next to the label to indicate the stamper that was used. Some collectors like first editions. Actually, the first pressing from the 95th stamper may sound better than that last pressing from a first stamper. Victor pressed a small letter A near the catalog number at the top of the record (not to be confused with side A which was the same size as the catalog number and to the right of it). The Gramophone Company originally added Roman numerals to the right of the embossed catalog number and later pressed the letter G to the right of their label to indicate a first stamper pressing.
Reservations and Biased Comments
For most of Gigli’s career, recordings were made on wax masters that were then processed to make stampers. Late in his career, some of his recordings were taped and then processed to make the stampers. This method enhanced recording engineer’s options for editing the results, and there is evidence that they manipulated the results for Gigli. A few recordings were re-pitched, others were altered to reduce noise, and so on. Take numbers such as 3A or 4B, allegedly recorded on dates when Gigli was not in a studio, seem to indicate that some alteration may have been made. I did not list a few of those because they were never released. When I was certain that a pressing of a recording was transcribed, I made note of it. I usually do not list long-playing or compact disc recordings. Quite a few of them are very poorly pitched and others have been altered in some fashion. I do list some in this discography because they represent the only known available version of a selection, and I am impressed with those produced for the Naxos label because they faithfully transferred the sound of the recordings in question in proper pitch and with a minimum of any sort of editing. Unfortunately, the titles listed in the booklets that accompany Naxos sets are often misleading. For example, selections sung in Italian are listed in French or German. Frederick Weatherly is credited with writing the libretto for Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci.” He did translate the opera’s libretto into English which Gigli probably never heard, and it is doubtful that he ever sang the opera in English.
Incidentally, I was not compensated in any way for producing this discography. If the Naxos Company benefits from my comments, good for them. Their reproductions are usually excellent despite an occasional misprint in their brochures. I have only seen and heard excerpts from one of his films. Several were filmed in German and in Italian. The one I saw, “Forget Me Not”, was filmed in England and it was a remake of one of his German films. The sound- track was not ideal, the singing was fairly good, the film was not. But I developed a more favorable opinion of Gigli as a result of watching it. There was something charming and likeable about him that I had not anticipated. Gigli did make commercial recordings of many of the songs featured in his motion pictures. These are not to be confused with sound-track recordings heard in the films. One of the more controversial is Gigli’s recording of the “Prologo” from the opera “Pagliacci.” It is an aria usually sung by baritones. He was a featured player, and he may have sung it in a film entitled “I Pagliacci” that was released in Italy. He was also featured in the German version of the film entitled “Lache Bajazzo”, but a baritone, Hans Hotter, is credited with singing the aria in that version of the film. According to Gary Galo, the issued recording was transposed up to suit Gigli’s vocal range. There are at least seven extant pressings of recordings in private collections that could not be issued by Naxos or other companies because the copyright laws prohibited their release, especially in the United States. A few of the recordings that are listed in the discography were released in 45-RPM or 33-RPM formats, but not on compact discs. Despite the unavailability of a few recordings, Gigli’s output was enormous and we should not concern ourselves too much about the absence of a few titles that he and the record companies did not approve for release while he was alive.
Acknowledgments (Version 2.0) As mentioned in the Introduction, some of the Italian recording data could not be verified at the time the original version of this work was posted. Thankfully, David Cutler alerted me to the fact that Gigli was not in Italy on one of the dates cited, and I am grateful to him, and to John Banks for their input in revising the data for the 1946 “Aida” recordings.
With many thanks to John Bolig and the Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) who hold the discography of Beniamino Gigli’s commercial recordings. The DAHR is a database of master recordings made by American record companies during the 78rpm era. It is part of the American Discography Project (ADP)—an initiative of the University of California, Santa Barbara that is edited by a team of researchers based at the UCSB Library.