Paradoxes, anomalies, revaluations: gramophone history is full of them. In 'real' history, to judge by contemporary accounts and people's memories, Melba was a cold artist; her perform ances, at best, had a technical perfection, her tone the purity of a choirboy's, her stage personality a passionless authority. You could find press cuttings which said something different, but this was the general impression. Up to a point, records confirm it. Where there is what might possibly be taken for emotion—for instance, in Mimi's Farewell—you find the same device (for that is clearly what it is) at the same point in each of the several recordings she made of the excerpt. Yet another impression grows with each new return to the records over a long period of years, and that is that the spirit within the singing is as personal as the voice itself. A record is recognizably 'Melba' not only because of timbre and technique but through a strongly individual personality and a style that reflects it. This can come to elicit an equally strong emotional response from the listener. It may be the first sound of the voice, it may be some special passage where you feel the very essence of the singer is caught or it may be just a chance, off-guard moment when a record, a phrase or even a single note takes you unawares: but at that point there is an emotional charge such as no 'cold' singer could generate.
Both of these CDs have brought this home afresh. The Larrikin Australian collection begins with Comin' thro' the rye, not perhaps the most promising title and not the record that might come first to mind as an introduction to Melba's art. But as you listen 'through', eliminating the accretions (as the mind perfectly well can), you see an expressive, changing face (''need a body froon'' and she frowns, ''I dinna care tae tell'' and she smiles); there are high spirits, there is affection; there is a real communicator's control of pace. Come back to Erin follows and, although memory has this clearly labelled as one of the records that show her voice at its finest, what impresses now, in the sequence of songs, is also the tenderness of expression, the gentleness of touch. Later in the recital John Anderson finds her intent upon words everything tells of sincere feeling here. In opera, it is true she sometimes seems to have no interest whatsoever in the dramatic context: the Lucia Mad scene and Gilda's ''Caro nome'' give hardly any clue as to the emotions they might be supposed to express. But having just been listening to a highly-rated modern soprano's record of the Jewel song in Faust, I come upon Melba's as a scintillation, a charm, a rejoicing of the spirit never mind the superiority of tone and technique. And then that record of the Traviata duet, made in old age with her young protege: we may smile at some features of the style and frown at others but the wistful, kindly sadness of Violetta is caught in the tone here, and many more expressive sopranos have missed the force of the word ''morra'' which Melba invests with unflinching tragic realism.
As for the two records, they could hardly be more different in quality, yet I personally was thrilled by both. The EMI is bright, clean, marvellously minimal in surface noise; the Australian transfers are mellow, and served up with a pretty well homogenized but still thick layer of surface. EMI get their speeds and pitches right, the Australians place several of them (Rigoletto, Figaro, Lucia and Lo, here the gentle lark) a semitone high. Compare the Boheme duet, common to both, and the EMI version stands out vividly, an expertly cleaned old master, yet the gentler, dustier light of the other has its attractions too. In both the surpassing beauty of the final notes is unmistakable. In both, too, there are moments of exasperation; but, be warned, a taste for Melba can become addictive. In the midst of exasperation with one of these records you may well find yourself compulsively buying the other as well, discovering the real beauty of both when you come back to them unexpectedly six months later.'