Recording Activities and Final Performances
In the same year (1912) as her Australian tour, Kirkby Lunn recorded two duets with the famous Covent Garden and Met tenor, John McCormack, from operas composed by Wolf-Ferrari. These duets have been re-mastered and re-issued on CD, as have some of her other, solo, 78-rpm discs. Her main body of her recordings were made for the Gramophone Company between 1909 and 1916 but there were also Pathe records cut earlier, including duets that feature Ben Davies, another tenor. Among the operatic excerpts on her recorded output are music by Wagner and, as we have seen, Verdi, Ponchielli, Gluck, Mozart and Wolf-Ferrari. The acoustic recording process of the day was not particularly kind to Kirkby-Lunn's "warm rich notes of true contralto quality" (as critic Herman Klein spoke of her voice), although in some pieces such as the Gounod 'Entreat me not to leave thee', or the Arthur Goring Thomas 'A Summer night', her famed control of the broad compass, and the poise and grandeur of her delivery, are apparent.
In 1919–22, Kirkby Lunn reappeared at Covent Garden, choosing her celebrated part of Kundry for her last appearances there with the British National Opera Company. After this she remained before the public for several years more in concert and recital. (At much the same time, Marie Brema was making her reappearances in Orfeo.)
Read more about this topic: Louise Kirkby Lunn
Famous quotes containing the words recording, activities, final and/or performances:
“I didn’t have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let’s say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“Minds do not act together in public; they simply stick together; and when their private activities are resumed, they fly apart again.”
—Frank Moore Colby (1865–1925)
“Still let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“At one of the later performances you asked why they called it a “miracle,”
Since nothing ever happened. That, of course, was the miracle
But you wanted to know why so much action took on so much life
And still managed to remain itself, aloof, smiling and courteous.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)