By now the last ripples from the “Collection” article on Pagliacci (3/08) will have died down and the time has come to stir them up again. They arose when Mike Ashman threw in as his top recommendation a recording from 1934, made privately (that is, “pirated”) from a broadcast of the stage performance at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. This was his firm choice, not fitted in, as some less intrepid spirit (myself, for instance) might have done, to the “historical” slot, where it would have gone accepted without notice taken. Karajan, Muti and the rest were passed over in favour of Vincenzo Bellezza, Domingo, Pavarotti et al for Giovanni Martinelli, and EMI, DG and Co for the pirate. I hope some of our readers will already have given it a go on the strength of that. If not, it is due for a first review, so here is a second call to action.

People talk dismissively about “those crackly old records”. Here it is the stage that crackles – with energy. The charge runs through orchestra and chorus. And never mind about the recording being old: it is uncommonly vivid. The feeling of the house, keyed up for its matinee double-bill (Salome to follow) is itself part of the show: another layer to the play-within-the-play. At the centre are two towering individual performances – Martinelli’s Canio and Lawrence Tibbett’s Tonio. Tibbett combines the gusto of old-time theatre with some rare refinements of the vocal art, and he is in magnificent voice. Martinelli sings as in a slowly consuming fire, his arioso a nobly sustained utterance in which Leoncavallo’s music realises most completely its capacity for tragic intensity. Nor should Queena Mario’s Nedda pass as over‑shadowed: she too makes the part live dramatically, and her light, pure voice is skilfully used, in a way worthy of her teacher, the great Marcella Sembrich.