Looking for Luisa Tetrazzini (1871-1940)

I think this post began when I was looking over some very early variable speed 78 records I found in a junk shop. They were made at the very dawn of audio recording history by the Gramophone Company in London and produced in Hanover.

They are one-sided, very thick, and etched with an angel on the reverse ...


The labels on the front were gold printed and colour coded for the artist involved, so mauve for Nellie Melba ...


... green for Enrico Caruso ...


... and pink (though it looks mauve here) for Luisa Tetrazzini ...


These records appeared in the first years of the twentieth century and cost one guinea each - a not insubstantial sum at the time.

Because a reasonable amount is generally known about Melba and Caruso, I began to look for whatever was on the net about Tetrazzini, particularly in terms of film and audio recordings.

The singer made her operatic debut in 1890 as Inez in Meyerbeer's 'L'Africaine', in Florence, the city of her birth.

Her early career was in Italy, with tours of Russia, Spain and South America. And in the lyric-coloratura repertory - for example, 'La Traviata', 'Rigoletto' and Lucia di Lammemoor.

In America, she initially experienced contractual difficulties which prevented her performing there. She left New York for San Francisco in 1905, famously saying 'I will sing in San Francisco if I have to sing there in the streets, for I know the streets of San Francisco are free'.


In 1907, Tetrazzini managed to appear for the first time at Covent Garden and create a sensation as Violetta in 'La Traviata' - Nellie Melba, her bitter rival and the reigning diva absoluta in London, was out touring in Australia and had left her 'territory' unguarded.

The plethora of vocal recordings of opera singers of this period bring them (somewhat) into the present in a way not possible for their predecessors.

Luisa Tetrazzini in the Recording Studio c1915

And this was even more the case with the increasing volume of film being recorded.

And the two media together seem to give powerful suggestions of the effects of these artists on stage.

This first (silent) footage here shows the expressive liveliness and infectious vivacity of the singer and gives a sense of how she might present a light comic role.

Tetrazzini Broadcasting in London, 26 September 1921

The second segment shows the diva writing a letter of appreciation to the recording company with which she has just been working ...

... and reveals in close-up surprisingly elegant nail-polished fingers - which speaks to her personality in a way I wouldn't have imagined.



The next piece of film shows Tetrazzini saying goodbye to an 'Uncle Rex' (?) and then getting into a car ...

... and, while constructed as the leaving-taking the important person, shows her as warm, unselfconscious and smilingly full of fun.

This impression is consolidated in this film of her leaving Euston Station for a tour of the UK on 3rd October, 1932. And there is also something of a firm-ish no-nonsense approach to life seen here.

There is a record of Tetrazzini's wedding in Florence in 1926 to so-called toy-boy Pietro Vernati, who was twenty years her junior.


I'm still trying to track it down - and if anyone have any ideas ... .

The final and perhaps most interesting piece of footage (from 1932) has an audio track. Tetrazzini is seen listening to a record of her old colleague Enrico Caruso singing 'M'appari, Tutt'Amor' from 'Martha'. She then joins in and, while her voice is very much less than it is in earlier audio recordings, we have the opportunity towards the end of hearing her speaking voice. It is high-pitched and flutey and is complemented by her exuberant and infectious laughter.

Again there is a spontaneous warmth and uncomplicated enthusiasm which is seen particularly in her blowing a kiss towards the record player to her old friend.

Luisa Tetrazzini and Caruso sing 'M'appari, Tutt'Amor' from 'Martha' (1932)

Tetrazzini had an exceptionally strong vocal technique in terms of trills, staccati, runs and ornamentation in general. She had a very firm and undisguised control of the vocal line which produces a beautiful formalism, a characteristic for which Joan Sutherland has been much criticized. Tetrazzini also had, again like Sutherland, a powerful upper register with great clarion quality. I remember 'Our Joan' producing notes in 'Lucia' that seemed to leave the stage and float out into the auditorium, and hover in the air, ringing loud in your ears.

Probably good to finish with Tetrazzini singing at her best.

So a 1909 'Ah, non credea mirarti' from 'La Sonnambula' (Bellini) ...

... and a 1911 'Una voce poco fa' from 'The Barber of Seville' (Rossini) ...

Such a diva would probably like to have the last word - so here from the pages of 'Life' magazine, 1938 ...






I particularly like the obviously unexpected and slightly awkward moment when the telephone rings.

And the interruption after the official at-the-desk portrait.

When you move away from the constructed and polished atmosphere of the photographic session and gain a real insight into the sitter, here emotions that would not usually be revealed and recorded!

One of those What-Might-Have-Been Situations

I came across some very grainy footage recently of a most extraordinary ballet dancer - someone who obviously had the greatest future. Around 16, she'd been taking leading roles in the Mariinsky (Kirov) Theatre while still a student at the school.


The film shows Valentina Semyukova in a pas de deux from 'The Nutcracker'.


She already seems perfectly formed as a dancer, about to enlarge on her technique.


Through the movement, there is a perfect disposition of the forms of her body - creating an continuously exquisite line.


The phrasing with respect to the music is always intelligently considered and placed in an unmannered fashion. Not just following the music but leading purposefully away and then returning to catch the beat.

She is still technically tentative, which is particularly evident in the section involving 'fish dives' - the choreography has been simplified somewhat for the still developing dancer.

Very sadly, Valentina Semyukova died of an unspecified illness at just 17 years of age.

One of those What-Might-Have-Been Situations

I came across some very grainy footage recently of a most extraordinary ballet dancer - someone who obviously had the greatest future. Around 16, she'd been taking leading roles in the Mariinsky (Kirov) Theatre while still a student at the school.


The film shows Valentina Semyukova in a pas de deux from 'The Nutcracker'.


She already seems perfectly formed as a dancer, about to enlarge on her technique.


Through the movement, there is a perfect disposition of the forms of her body - creating an continuously exquisite line.


The phrasing with respect to the music is always intelligently considered and placed in an unmannered fashion. Not just following the music but leading purposefully away and then returning to catch the beat.

She is still technically tentative, which is particularly evident in the section involving 'fish dives' - the choreography has been simplified somewhat for the still developing dancer.

Very sadly, Valentina Semyukova died of an unspecified illness at just 17 years of age.

Berlin ... and Old Berlin

The Brandenburg Gate, Berlin

I first went to Berlin as a late teenager when the city was divided and The Wall was still in place.

As much as anything, what struck us all at the time was the contrast between the roaring economic engine of West Berlin with its brightly-lit shops full of Xmas cheer and the poverty and gloom and emptiness of the other socialist half of the city. And the almost palpable danger at the Brandenburg Gate where the top of the wall on both sides was bristling with armed guards. And you knew a dash across the open space towards the Gate and the West could actually get you shot.

I was back in Berlin in 2003 as part of a four month stay in Europe. And was curious to see how the city worked now it was one again.

At the Brandenburg Gate - now - the only word is you should kiss the guy you're with under one of its arches, if you want to stay together for life! And of course I did.

As we wandered about what had been East Berlin, we noticed traces of the pre-1939 city, with its public buildings almost entirely in a Greco-Roman style ...




The CBD in fact is a museum of 50s and 60s architecture, particularly round Alexanderplatz - a phenomenon which spills over into the surrounding suburbs ...


And new architecture is springing up all over the now unified city ...


I particularly remember on my first visit the Pergamon Museum the interior design seeming to be unchanged since the Second World War. The rooms were coded for period and content in friezes round the top of their walls - so those with Greek antiquities had the key design motif ...

The museum had been built to house the Great Pergamon Altar, a second century BC podium transported wholesale to Berlin from two digs (1897 and 1904) from the ancient Greek city of Pergamon, modern day Bergama in Turkey.

The Great Pergamon Alter, Pergamon Museum, Berlin (Not my photo)

Of course, I prefer my own photographs with their own special upper right quadrant smudge!




The museum also holds the Ishtar Gate, a tiled entrance to the 575 BC city of Babylon which was reconstructed here from material from digs in Iraq in the 1930s.




And there are ancient Assyrian winged bulls and exquisite base reliefs ...




And if you'd ever wondered where the Code of Hammurabi (Babylon, 1790 BC) was ...


In a memory lane kinda thing, we ascended the Fernsehturm (TV Tower) on Alexanderplatz ...


... to the revolving restaurant with its spectacular views of the city ...






If by this stage you were wondering about the antiquities focus, there an historical reason. With the divide of the city in 1945, the museum and art collections were split such that East Berlin had the antiquities.

The Agyptisches Museum (and a range of others) have got some really hot objects, from Nefertiti's bust ...





... down to, for me, more evocative ancient domestic objects from Egypt, Greece and Italy ...







And when you've done all your hard but elevating arty-farty work, there's a great open and public gay scene to explore ...


... with lots of public events, like the gay-spinned Father's Day ...




The gay scene moves around - so the guide is needed to tell you which venues are gay on any given night.

The sub-culture reminds you a bit of Christopher Isherwood's Berlin of the 1930s. In one rather ordinary looking bar, you needed to check in your gear at the door - no biggie. I checked the place out as you do when you arrive and noticed a row of benches coming away from the wall in a very wide corridor between the bar and the toilet - each with a reclining guy being fisted, with a spotlight between his legs - just in case you missed the 'spot'. On the way back to the bar, I was approached by a rather hot guy who asked me 'Do you want to fist me now? Or later?'.

As we wandered round Berlin this time during the day, I couldn't help but wonder at it seeming so unexpectedly quiet, almost deserted. Like a very leisurely Sunday - and everyday.

People told us that it has been felt things would normalize within a short period after the wall went down - that industry and people would flow in. But the 'spirit of uncertainty' from being so long an island of capitalism within a sea of socialism keeps the population at between 3 and 4 million and development at bay.

And also as we meandered about it was hard not to continually wonder what the city might have been like had it not been pretty much flattened at the end of WWII.

It seems to me some tiny idea can be gained from this footage ...

... with its nostalgic and sentimental sound-track from Marlene Dietrich - singing about her city.