And the Greatest Recording Ever Made Was...

The Greatest Musical Recording Ever Made Was…

BY WARREN BOROSON

When British music critics were asked by BBC Music magazine to choose the greatest recordings ever made (January 2012), first place went to Sir Georg Solti’s recording (with the Vienna Philharmonic) of Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” (1956-65).

     A fine choice, certainly. The cast consisted of such legendary singers as Kirsten Flagstad, Birgit Nilsson, Christa Ludwig, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, George London, and Regine Crispin, among others.

     Still, some might argue that the greatest recording of all time was actually Enrico Caruso and Tita Ruffo’s singing of the duet from Verdi’s “Otello.” Caruso was Othello, Ruffo was Iago.

    The recording was made 100 years ago. On January 8, 1914. And the two men had collaborated on an “acoustic” recording, singing into a horn, without the use of electricity. In New York City. Pretty crude compared with today’s electrical recordings and high fidelity.

    In 1983, Harold Schonberg, the chief music critic of The New York Times, compiled a list of the 12 best singers who had sung at the Met (for at least eight years). He named Caruso the greatest tenor and Ruffo the greatest baritone.

   And in 1914 they were at the height of their powers. Caruso was 42, Ruffo was 38.

   They recorded two arias. One, a duet “Enzo Grimaldo,” from La Gioconda, by Amilcare Ponchielli, has gone missing. Only the Otello aria survives. They did it in a single take. This “paragon of recorded duets,” wrote Caruso’s son, Enrico Caruso Jr., and Andrew Farkas, “has never been surpassed for sheet vocal opulence.” Another singer and top-flight critic, Nigel Dennis, said the recording “remains to this day one of the most thrilling pieces of operatic singing ever committed to disc.”

      It is certainly magnificent. The two singers were clearly competing.  And their voices were somewhat similar—Caruso’s being a baritonal tenor, Ruffo a high baritone. Their voices were so alike that it is sometimes hard to determine who is singing.

   Caruso was, of  course, the man of a thousand voices, as Chaliapin called him. He  had everything: a powerful, trumpet-like voice, a tender, silvery voice. When Puccini heard the yet-unknown Caruso sing for him, he asked him, “Who sent you to me? God?”

  Ruffo is nowhere near as famous as Caruso, but perhaps he should be. His was the Voice of the Lion, and there are reports that Caruso had to rest his voice for two weeks after singing with Ruffo—and would never sing with him again.

     Ruffo also distinguished himself for sheer courage. He dared to criticize Mussolini and was thrown into prison for his effrontery. International outrage freed him. Mussolini’s minions also physically attacked Ruffo before a performance in Paris; Ruffo nonetheless went on with the show. At a time when a good many Italian singers groveled at Mussolini’s feet—Gigli and Pinza, for example—Ruffo was a shining exception.

            Here is Caruso and Ruffo’s magnificent 1914 recording of the Oath Duet from “Otello”:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Enrico_Caruso%2C_Titta_Ruffo%2C_Giuseppe_Verdi%2C_S%C3%AC%2C_pel_ciel_marmoreo_giuro%21_%28Otello%29.ogg

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   BBC magazine’s recent poll listed not just the top ten recordings, but the supposedly 50 “greatest recordings of all time.”

    Where was the Caruso-Ruffo recording on the list of 50?

    Nowhere.