Claudia Muzio - Recordings

Recordings

Claudia Muzio is represented by recordings from various stages of her career, but few of them are from the period of her greatest successes in the late 1920s and early 1930s. She also recorded primarily for two companies whose distribution was limited and erratic: Pathé and Edison. Muzio's Pathé discs are of mixed quality due to Pathé's problematic recording process – artists recorded to cylinder masters which were then pantographically transferred to disc masters for making stampers, and frequency range loss and distortion often occurred during the cylinder-to-disc processing. Her Edison recordings, however, represent not only some of the best operatic recordings released by that company, but also Muzio's power and ability to project her personal intensity through the difficult acoustic recording process. She was aided at Edison by chief recordist Walter Miller and staff conductor Cesare Sodero.

• 1911. HMV. Muzio recorded two arias, including "Sì, mi chiamano Mimì" from La bohème, when she was only 22 and her voice and technique were still relatively immature.
• 1917–1918. Pathé. 43 titles recorded.
• 1920–1925. Edison. 37 titles recorded.
• 1932. In October, Muzio appeared in the opening production of Tosca at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House; the opening night was recorded for radio, and act 1 has been issued on CD.
• 1934–1935. Columbia. Muzio personally produced and financed a set of 26 recordings for Columbia in 1934 and 1935. By 1935, there is some noticeable weakening of the top of her voice but her expressive powers are well-displayed, especially in "Addio del passato" from Verdi's La traviata. They are the recordings by which she has been best remembered.