Listening to Battistini, said our founder, is like drinking a good old burgundy, and as far as good old burgundies are concerned I’m sure he knew best. ‘Old’: that is certainly evident. The vocal style is old, the manners are those of another and more grandiloquent age. The recordings are old too; back almost to the beginning of recording-time for the earliest of them; and, like the good old burgundy, I dare say, there is a lively sense of the past wonderfully preserved, for the sound of that voice singing (say) Don Giovanni’s Serenade almost a century ago is immediate and poignant like a finely preserved wine successfully uncorked. Moreover, he himself was old, at any rate by the time the last of his records was made: 68 in 1924, still both firm and supple with deep and unexhausted springs of energy. Good old burgundy is in addition no doubt an expensive taste, and the originals of these records here are not going at a penny for a song. A fine 1906 Battistini orange label would not fetch much in Antiques Roadshow (£20 perhaps) but with the 1902 Warsaws you could for sure add another nought on the end. And then, what do you do with that fine long-preserved burgundy? Savour it, think it over and savour it again in retrospect. So with Battistini. Sir Compton was right, as (not quite) always.
The question then is: do you want him (Battistini) complete or in a representative survey? If the latter, then one of the single Symposium discs will do: the first, I would suggest. That will give you three of the best 1902s, a good selection of the later years and, from the last series, the splendid Maria de Rohan aria, the two super-rare and excellent Fonotecnicas, and (probably the last of all his recordings) the dashing, cavalier La partida.
But of course you want Battistini complete. So it’s Romophone (who also have in many instances the better transfers). Let’s see what you miss out on, even up to June 1911 – which is where Romophone’s first volume ends – if you limit yourself to the Symposium discs. Valuably, from 1902 there is the Tannhauser, from 1906 the Damnation de Faust, from 1911 Werther (the role Massenet specially adapted for him), the Puritani arias, Gounod’s Le soir. Besides, Battistini is not one to cut back on: he is core-repertory for any self-respecting collection of singers on record. In one sense it is a pity that we have such duplication of effort – if EMI had transferred Keith Hardwick’s superb Battistini edition to CD there would have been no need for it (and it includes, incidentally, the two items described in the Symposium Vol. 2 as “not previously published”). Nevertheless, choice is all to the good and still more to the good is the process of keeping the great name in circulation. I personally don’t support the ‘king of baritones’ nomination, but neither would I put another in his place. There is no throne, but a small aristocracy in whose company Battistini is pre-eminent.'