Sound recording and the end of the Italian Lohengrin

Abstract

This article compares early and mid twentieth-century Italian-language recordings of Lohengrin excerpts with German-language recordings of the same period. The production and distribution of Italian-language recordings in the United States is an extension of nineteenth-century practices, in which ‘national styles’ of singing were detachable from specific repertoires. Preserving characteristic vocal inflections and distinctive interpretations, these recordings give insight into the intersections and conflicts between the various national performing traditions that were so important to nineteenth-century operatic life. The interpretative diversity of these recordings is an index of the extent to which performance traditions and individual character were markers of cultural (and economic) value in the first decades of the twentieth century. Focusing on Elsa’s Dream and the Grail Narration, I show how this interpretative diversity declined dramatically during the course of the twentieth century. This decline was precipitated by a number of factors, including the introduction of the LP disc in 1948. But the decline of the Italian Lohengrin also attests to a paradigm shift essential to the reception of classical music in the United States: from the idea that the recording is a reproduction of a voice to one in which it functions primarily as a realization of the composer’s score.