Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera/Sound files

Puccini

If noone minds, I'm just going to make a list of my intended cleanups here. I thought I'd do Puccini on a grand scale for the anniversary. =) I could do it in private if you'd rather, but... well, committing publicly is a good way to make sure I get it done. =)

The Internet Archive is an often annoying source to use - it's often rather low on details, and so requires a certain amount of research. But if you know public domain recordings of, say, Caruso, or Farrar, or Melba exist, you can often find them there. =) So, let's go through some things! =)

La bohème

It really does look like I may be able to get a fairly extensive set of recordings from La bohème. This appeals to me. =)

• The Caruso/Melba O soave fanciulla has already been done. Done

• Ah, Mimi, tu piú! (Caruso and Scotti) - This is really good. I suppose I don't need to point that out when it's Caruso. I found another recording of this that was quite good, but... Done

• More Caruso La bohème. Three recordings here. I think I'll skip the Caruso/Farrar O soave fanciulla, as we have the Caruso/Melba, and something goes crazy in the middle of the transfer. The others should be great. Io non che... done, others undone

• A lovely recording of Si, mi chiamano Mimi by Geraldine Farrar. Lucrezia Bori also manages a quite good recording. [1] [2] and PD-Edison Records applies, making it a useful inclusion for her article.

• Addio Dolce Svegliare Alla Mattina

Tosca Pretty good coverage here too.

• Caruso - Recondita armonia Done

• Pasquale Amato: Te Deum Done

• E lucevan di stelle: I think the Slezak is better than the Caruso here. Caruso has a very badly-played piano ([3]). Slezak has a full orchestra, or at least a decent approximation of same. (Slezak) One must ask: What the hell were they thinking, coupling one of the best tenors with a half-competent pianist? Slezak done
  • The E lucevan le stelle here is better than the alternatives I thought I had at the time. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 16:05, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

• Geraldine Farrar sings Vissa d'arte. There's going to be a couple places in this one where the cleanup will be interesting, but I'll try. =) Other options are Adelina Agostinelli , and Emmy Destinn. Destinn done

• Antonio Scotti: Gia, mi dicon venal

Gianni Schicchi

Presuming the copyright checks out: Frances Alda - O mio bambino caro Done

Turandot is past the U.S. 1923 copyright barrier. There may be some recordings of it out of copyright, but it would be difficult to prove it, and they probably won't be in the obvious archives.

Madama Butterfly

• Caruso-Farrar: Un Po' Di Vero C'e

• I found three options for Un bel di vedremo: Emmy Destinn, Frances Alda, and Geraldine Farrar. I'll have to check New Zealand Copyright law again for Alda, but I believe the copyright status on all of these is fine.

• Frances Alda - Ancora un passo - If this cleans up, it should be great. Done. Cleanup acceptable.

• [Frances Alda and Sophie Braslau: Tutti i fior - this one will be a difficult cleanup.

• Amore o grillo - I'd like an evaluation of this one, please.

Manon Lescaut

• It's not very good, but it's all I could find. Say if you want me to do this anyway.

I'd appreciate if people with a more encyclopedic knowledge of opera libretti could look through the lists at http://www.archive.org/details/Caruso_part1 and http://www.archive.org/details/Caruso_part2 and tell me if there's anything Puccini in there. I see a lot of stuff that we'll almost certainly want later - Celeste Aida, Carmen, etc - but, well, I've been asked to get the Puccini for the portal done by November, the request is reasonable, because I want to do Puccini, and so... Puccini first. =)

Non-Puccini

• E Scherzo, od e folia - an astounding recording of a quintet from Un ballo in maschera.

Caruso - O Souverain, O Juge, O Pere! - Pity I didn't find this a week ago, but this would make our coverage of Le Cid even better, so I think I'll do it. =) Done

Scotti - Some Verdi, some Donizetti...

Anyway, I think everyone will agree that if I do all of these - and I want to - that our coverage of Puccini will be best described as "fantastic!" There's about 16 definites in here, —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shoemaker's Holiday (talk • contribs) 05:11, 2 October 2008

Comment

Re this link: http://www.archive.org/details/Caruso-LaBoheme, "Testa adorata" is from Leoncavallo's La bohème not Puccini's.

Re this link: http://www.archive.org/details/Caruso_part1, there are two more by Puccini - "Non ve I'avevo detto? ... Addio fiorito asil" from Madame B. and "Donna non vidi mai" from Manon Lescaut. Donna non vidi mai done. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 05:10, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Re this link: http://www.archive.org/details/Caruso_part2, there's "Vecchia zimarra, senti" from La bohème. Interesting. This a Colline's aria, normally sung by a baritone.

Re Gianni Schicchi ("O mio bambino caro") - the aria is "O mio BABBINO caro". (It's misprinted in the list at the archive)

Re Caruso vs Slezak "Lucevan le stelle" - the interpetations are quite different. Slezak's is obviously from someone who's not a native speaker of Italian and it shows. Hard to explain, but it's a rather self-conscious and "careful" and well, not "italianate". Caruso's phrasing is much better, more deeply felt, and more Puccini-like. Also, I judge performances of that aria by the low notes at the end, especially the one on "vita". Caruso's is so much better. But all that's just my personal opinion. As for piano vs. orchestra, it depends whether your emphasis is on the best singing or the best idea you can give of the music itself. But the orchestra version with Slezak doesn't come close to approximating what you'd hear in the opera house anyway. I'd tend to go for the best singing. Voceditenore (talk) 06:43, 2 October 2008 (UTC) Addendum re Turandot. You won't find a recording that's out of copyright because the music itself is still in copyright, as is the libretto. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 07:00, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I apologise. I don't speak Italian very well and I'm afraid it shows, nor was I looking out for Leoncavallo. =) I think I'll do the Leoncavallo, though. It'd make such a great way of contrasting the two composers, if very carefully labelled.

On more important points: I think piano and voice is fine, but I don't think the piano in the Caruso version of "E lucevan stelle" is very sensitively played at all. I definitely agree Caruso has the better voice, but I think having the lead in and so on adds to the impact - this is, after all, a scene of a person in the middle of torture remembering the happy times now lost. Maybe I'll do both.

Finally, thank you so much for checking those lists - The Manon Lescaut certainly fills a gap. =)

Oh, and a quick P.S. Turandot is out of copyright here in Britain, and Italy and so on, of course. It might actually be in America, too, depending on some history of copyright law - the U.S. only signed the Berne Convention on Copyright really late, and I believe they only granted a U.S. copyright to things still in copyright in their home countries. That said, I only really know that Gilbert and Sullivan never successfully got a U.S. copyright; I'm not sure if the same rules applied in the 1920s. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 14:38, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

To prepare, I decided to finish off what I had already started. Here's the first pass "O Souverain".

Can I get a few views of the restoration so far? Because it's a little easier to remove the scraping noise from the partially-restored version, but, this causes a certain difficulty backtracking, as the two tracks would be pre-mixed. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 23:16, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

As for Puccini, I thought I'd start by working through Tosca, as it's my favourite. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 23:11, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Having a little trouble with the Puccini, because my sound card hates me. I think I may have something, though. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 21:46, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Tosca

Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 05:29, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

La bohème

Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 22:35, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Gianni Schicchi

Manon Lescaut

Madama Butterfly

Leoncavallo's La bohème (For comparison.)

Auber overture

This is a bit of a judgement call. My first reaction is "skip it", but there's not a lot of public domain Auber out there, so I thought I'd ask instead. Presuming I can get better instrumental tone, is this worth doing? Obviously, the MP3 is awful, but that's a restoration, and different choices in the restoration might have better results. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 17:55, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

E lucevan le stelle

This is mostly done, I'll probably do another pass to get rid of as many of the remaining clicks as possible.

Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 10:25, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Done. There's a couple clicks remaining where they couldn't be removed without making things worse, due to position, but it's mostly very clean. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 03:06, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

O Mimì, tu più non torni

Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 19:40, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Vissi d'arte

Not quite done - the ending needs a little more click removal - but I find announcing these means that I finish them up much quicker.

By the way, please comment on these. Informal reviews help me to improve my search. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 05:28, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

• That was lovely. Thanks for uploading it. What a passionate interpretation!Nrswanson (talk) 05:35, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Recondita armonia

This pretty much completes the Tosca restorations - there's a couple alternative singers or takes I could do for each song, and I should like to see if I can get the hiss down on Gia, mi venal enough to make it a bit more useable, but we now have at least one recording for every song I was able to find in Public domain recording archives, and I have added all but Gia, mi venal to the article on Tosca. (It may be worth adding them to Giacomo Puccini as well.)

I think this recording is quite strong, although does end a bit abruptly, presumably because the opera just carries on afterwards, without coming to a pause. I thought I'd do a little Madame Butterfly next, or maybe the Gianni Schiacci and Manon Lescaut recordings. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 08:08, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

By the way, one point of order: Do you prefer it with the title in quotes like this:

or just like this:

I'd like to know so that I can try for consistency. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 08:14, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

La bohème - but not as you know it!

Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 10:19, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Gianni Schicchi

And I think that's it for today. I finished up some projects that I've been working on a while, and cherrypicked some of the easier ones of the remaining list. However, now I have a slight headache, which is probably a good sign to stop editing audio. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 11:33, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Ancora un passo

I lied. But I think I'll take a break from Puccini to do this marvellous quintet from Un ballo in maschera (E Scherzo Od E Folia, found here) - this recording is amazing, particularly for the period. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 15:32, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Manon Lescaut

Well, maybe one more Puccini...

I couldn't remove as much noise as I should have been able to, because someone helpfully removed the noise at the start and finish, giving me only a split-second of silence inside the piece to work from. I did what I could. This, by the way, gives us one recoding for every opera I could find a recording for. Given that NONE of Puccini's operas had recordings before this, that's a pretty good start, I'd say. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 05:08, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

For December~January Portal:Opera, I will publish 4 audios of Puccini (noted arias only). I have been thinking of Tosca - Recondita armonia, La boheme - O soave fanciulla, Manon Lescaut - Donna non vidi mai and Turandot - Nessun Dorma. We have all the 3 arias except "Nessun Dorma". Could you try to get it and if you could, please find other tenors because we have too many by Caruso already - Jay (talk) 05:54, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Isn't Turandot still in copyright in America, and thus ineligable for Wikipedia use? (Not to mention it premièred three years after Caruso's death, so finding a recording by him would be a neat trick.) It's also a very, very romantic tenor ballad heavy list - How about Vissi d'arte, O mio babbino caro, O soava fanciulla, and Donna non vidi mai? Slightly better balance of singers. If I could convince you to throw in one less-famous bit, the Act I finale of Tosca is gorgeous, after all, and shows off aspects of Puccini's writing not in the others. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 09:21, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Vissi d'arte, O mio babbino caro, O soava fanciulla, and Donna non vidi mai are good. About the Act 1 finale of Tosca is not neccessary if we chose Vissi d'arte. It is best to publish "noted arias" for non-opera fans to know Puccini's best works - Jay (talk) 09:29, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

As you see fit. It's not like we can't come back to Puccini later for another set. HEll, if we wanted to, we could do four for December, then switch for January. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 12:05, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Yep, we can do that too - Jay (talk) 12:18, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I just had a thought: Maybe it's best to save the Manon Lescaut for the moment - if I can find an Auber, then we could do a Puccini / Massenet / Auber trio of Manon Lescauts. I'll be doing Madama Butterfly this week - I'm sure we can find a notable aria in there. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 15:11, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

By the way, once I finish the Puccini set, I'm pretty open to what I do next. I was thinking maybe choose another composer, or take requests on operas. Anyone who wants something done can just suggest it. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 15:49, 10 November 2008 (UTC)