''It wins you against your convictions... [and] who cares a fig for dull convictions when Martinelli is throwing at you treasures of tone in that prodigal fashion?'' That was a critic's view of Un ballo in maschera at Covent Garden in 1919. ''Mr Martinelli was at his very top form... The tone was full and rich, firm and solid, yet had the rightness of grace and the sustained power for the climax. Astonishing phrases... Caruso redevivus.'' That was Ravinia Park in 1931. But this, of course, is 1942. Power and resonance are diminished, the voice sometimes tires and intonation suffers, the style tends ever more towards the declamatory. Yet what he still gives includes the supreme moment in the role (''Ah! l'ho segnato il sacrifizio mio'') supremely sung, the laughing ''E scherzo ed e follia'' imbued with such infectious humour that one feels like joining in, the love music (''Non sai tu'' especially) phrased and nuanced as by a master, the phrase ''Astro di queste tenebre'' attacked with all the fire and passion of youth. Often indeed the voice itself, and the lyrical line which it can still sustain, remains young in the clean-cut timbre that is always so finely concentrated. The Riccardo he sang that afternoon in 1942 was doubtless a shadow of its best self; but most of our readers who care for the singers of the past will have their store of affectionately collected shadows, and some of them (like this one) prove remarkably robust.
In Paul Jackson's absorbing Saturday Afternoons at the Old Met (Duckworth: 1992) the occasion is, ultimately, ''a dismal afternoon'' with Roman, the Amelia, ''in incredibly bad form'' and Castagna's ''admirable art... in decline'', it is Richard Bonelli's Renato that ''provides the only satisfying moments''. The American baritone, himself no youngster (born 1889, no more than four years younger than Martinelli, if the latter's official date of birth is correct), is certainly in splendidly resonant voice, and gives an authoritative, technically accomplished performance. The dismissal of Stella Roman seems to me unduly severe, and the remark that ''Panizza consistently chooses tempi that rob the work of its essential panache'' simply shows how reactions of this kind can differ, for I had found the life, the brio, of the conducting impressive enough to recall Panizza's earlier association with Toscanini. Of the recording as such, all reviews should carry a warning notice: this was a primitive 'pirate' job originally, with noisy and irregular surfaces, fluctuating communication with the singers on stage, and a limited frequency range for the orchestra. You have to be prepared to 'listen through', and are then rewarded by some unpredictably vivid glimpses of what would otherwise have been lost for ever.'