Adelina Patti - Recordings

Recordings

Patti cut more than 30 gramophone recordings of songs and operatic arias (some of them duplicates) — plus one spoken voice recording (a New Year's greeting to her third husband, which she intended him to keep as a memento) — at her Welsh home in 1905 and 1906. By then she was aged in her 60s, with her voice well past its prime after a busy operatic career stretching all the way back to 1859.

Nonetheless, the limpid purity of her tone and the smoothness of her legato line remained uniquely impressive, compensating to some extent for the weakening of her breath control. The records also display a lively singing personality as well as a surprisingly strong chest voice and a mellow timbre. Her trill remains wonderfully fluent and accurate and her diction is excellent. Overall her discs have a charm and musicality that give us a hint of why, at her peak, she commanded $5,000 a night.

Patti's recorded legacy included a number of songs and arias from the following operas: Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Faust, Martha, Norma, Mignon and La sonnambula.

The records were produced by the Gramophone & Typewriter Company (the foreunner of HMV). Patti's piano accompanist, Landon Ronald, wrote thus of his first recording session with the diva, "When the little (gramophone) trumpet gave forth the beautiful tones, she went into ecstasies! She threw kisses into the trumpet and kept on saying, 'Ah! Mon Dieu! Maintenant je comprends pourquoi je suis Patti! Oh oui! Quelle voix! Quelle artiste! Je comprends tout!' Her enthusiasm was so naïve and genuine that the fact that she was praising her own voice seemed to us all to be right and proper."

Thirty-two Patti recordings were reissued on CD in 1998 by Marston Records (catalogue number 52011-2).