American Opera Singers and Their Recordings: Critical Commentaries and Discographies (review)

First, the title:

Clyde T. McCants's study comprises fifty-two chapters on fifty-two individual American-born and generally American-based singers, from June Anderson to Dolora Zajick, and their studio and live-performance recordings from 1925 and after (singers who made only acoustical records are not covered); one composite chapter about Mario Lanza, Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, and other celluloid songbirds; and a detailed discography at the end of each chapter.

Next, the appendix:

Pages 383 and 384 of this survey of Yankee singers and their shellac, vinyl, and compact-disc legacies list sources of further information on McCants's subjects, as well as on vocalists who fall outside his geographic and temporal parameters. They include encyclopedic reference works or commentaries, such as the four-volume New Grove Dictionary of Opera; Nicolas Slonimsky's Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Classical Musicians; Paul Jackson's two volumes of exegesis of the Metropolitan Opera's Saturday broadcasts from 1931 to 1960; Peter G. Davis's The American Opera Singer: The Lives and Adventures of America's Great Singers in Opera and Concert from 1825 to the Present; the late, lamented Henry Pleasants's The Great Singers: From the Dawn of Opera to Our Own Time; and J. B. Steane's single-volume The Grand Tradition: Seventy Years of Singing on Record and his triple-decker Singers of the Century. Also included are books or periodicals that feature reviews of operatic recordings, such as the Opera on Record trilogy, The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Recorded Opera, various editions of The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and DVDs, Opera, Opera News, American Record Guide, Fanfare, Record Collector, Gramophone, Gramophone's regularly updated Classical Good CD Guide, and, of course, The Opera Quarterly.¹

American Opera Singers and Their Recordings contains elements of or draws upon all these invaluable (or at least useful) publications. The pithy biographical information recalls the thumbnail sketches that make up K. J. Kutsch and Leo Riemens's Concise Biographical Dictionary of Singers — which, surprisingly, is not mentioned in McCants's appendix.² The critical comments, generally one short paragraph per recording, echo the analyses of Paul Jackson, although they are much briefer and (as you shall see) less well informed than Jackson's fastidious dissections of Met broadcasts. The discographies are not as exhaustive and scholarly as those prepared by Record Collector authors or by OQ contributing and consulting editor William R. Moran; they include recordings of opera and operetta, a category that here takes in Broadway musicals such as Show Boat, The Sound of Music, and On the Town, but they bar discs of lieder, mélodies, and crossover material such as Irish songs, sea shanties, Christmas music, and the like. However, despite some fallibilities (such as overlooking the 1978 Deutsche Grammophon Fidelio with James King and Gwyneth Jones), they provide a good overview of each singer's "serious" career as captured by microphones. McCants frequently provides some buying advice, steering readers to the better/best of a singer's multiple recordings of the same opera, his or her choicest recital disc, a superior version of a certain opera, or the most satisfying compilation of a vocalist's recorded output. The consumer-conscious author — a retired clergyman who chairs the library commission of South Carolina's Fairfield County and who penned an archivists' shopping list titled Opera for Libraries: A Guide to Core Works, Audio and Video Recordings, Books, and Serials ³ — even faults record companies' wallet-draining penchant for recycling material from earlier recordings and reissuing it with "a mere handful" of new selections, forcing completists to duplicate many tracks already in their collections.

Now for everything between the title page and the not always reliable indexes of performing artists, composers, and operas:

Deciding which singers are worthy of discussion and which aren't is by definition a subjective and contentious area, and many readers will find fault with some...