It's Preiser for the prize here. They produce the clearer, brighter, more substantial sound, and they take care over the pitching, whereas Club 99 have Otello's arrival and (final) departure something around a semitone high. Both collections feature Zenatello's studio-made electrical recordings, and Preiser include the Otello love duet omitted by their rivals, presumably because it occurs
on their Hina Spani issue ((CD) 509/10, 9/90). In 99's favour are six records from the tenor's middle period, when he recorded for Edison; they also provide the listener with better value in playing-time and with some perspective so that the late records can be heard in relation to a time when the voice was fresher and presumably more obedient to the purposes of his art.
Zenatello was 50 in 1926 and not far from retirement. This was no very advanced age, but his career went back to the beginning of the century (he was Pinkerton in the famous premiere of Madama Butterfly in 1904), and he is said to have sung Otello more than 500 times. If one were to give an impersonal, detached account of these records, there would be a certain amount to put to their credit (firmness, power, energy) and rather more on the other side (inaccuracies, excesses, crudities). But maybe that would miss the point about him. For certain listeners he is one of those singers whose voice and utterance have something entirely special and deeply moving about them. I personally am not in this position concerning Zenatello but I can understand it. He sings (I don't mean this to be belittling) like an animal, or an animal in which we recognize human emotions that seem intensified by their urgency and by the uncomplicated sincerity of their expression. His Don Jose in the Flower song is like the dog that follows you home and wants to be let in, and in the finale it's the dog down the road howling because it has been shut out. In the ''Esultate'' his Otello carries victory like a bone between his teeth—but all those 500 performances have still not managed to teach him the subtler points of the score.
When he reappeared at Covent Garden in 1926 Sorabji found him ''very nearly the Italian tenor of caricature, a bad singer and actor; he hardly ever once removed his eyes from the front of the house, into which everything was shouted in the worst Italian manner'' (New Age, July 22nd, 1926). We can listen to these records hearing much the same thing. But every now and then there comes a jolt, perhaps with the gentleness of ''O dolci mani'' (and in the phrases before ''E lucevan le stelle'' I wonder whether ''io lascio al mondo'' has ever been more affectingly sung), or perhaps with the heartfelt utterances of Andrea Chenier (a magnificent Improvviso on Club 99 despite crackle and faulty pitching). There is greatness there. If in further doubt, sample his Pagliacci; almost painfully vivid in characterization, hauntingly apt in timbre.'