Great French Heroic Tenors (review)

Much of this disc presents the listener with a sound that no longer exists—that is, a thrusting, bright-toned tenor of dramatic weight, phrasing musically and eloquently in the French language. To realize what we have been missing for so many decades, try any of the three selections sung by Paul Franz. You'll come away distressed that France is seemingly incapable of producing such a singer today, but glad indeed that recordings of Franz and the others are available to us. Today's opera-company managers would kill to have just one of these gentlemen on their rosters.

The extensive biographical data in the booklet make clear that few of them enjoyed international careers to rank with those of their greatest Italian contemporaries. Affre did appear in San Francisco and New Orleans, de la Tour sang four roles at the Met, Verdière and Franz both starred at Covent Garden, and Luccioni went as far afield as Chicago, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo. Clearly, however, the career center for each of them throughout their singing lives remained Paris—except for Vezzani, whose disagreement with the Opéra-Comique after just a few seasons led to his making the rest of his career largely in the French provinces.

Their roles were not identical by any means, although they all sang Samson etDalila and most of them had Carmen, Aida, and Pagliacci in their stage repertoires. (Verdière was a Wagnerian, but only Franz really concentrated on the Wagner parts.) What seems extraordinarily impressive is that many of them were capable of roles we would associate today with significantly lighter voices, such as Gounod's Roméo. Most of them also studied at the Paris Conservatoire, where the teaching from, say, 1890 through at least 1930 must have been at a level of rigorous excellence that we can only begin to imagine today. Not all of these tenors have instruments of ravishing beauty, but they deliver the text with clarity (always a hallmark of good French singing); they produce steady, unforced tone; and most of them show a natural feeling for the needs of legato phrasing. In addition, many of these dramatic voices also managed a command of soft singing that one would normally attribute to a des Grieux or a Werther.

I hasten to add that all eight do not qualify as immortals. Georges Imbart de la Tour doesn't have a distinctive or even especially attractive timbre, and he hardly sounds a Radamès, let alone an Otello (both of which he sang onstage), except for a few phrases above the staff. He is hardly helped by the aria he sings here, "Esprits, gardiens" from Reyer's Sigurd, a dull piece indeed. Georges Granal is sabotaged by a lachrymose quality of expression that eventually wearies the listener. He has no trouble on top and the smooth tone seems that of a true ténor fort, but there is no appeal in the delivery, whether as Raoul, Arnold, or Eléazar.

The oldest of the singers, Agustarello Affre (born in 1858), has a superb instrument but uses it uninterestingly. He was somewhat fresher of voice here (arias recorded in 1903 and 1904) than in his famous complete 1912 Roméo et Juliette. "Ô toi, mon seul espoir," a.k.a. "Ah, sì, ben mio" from Il trovatore, shows a fast vibrato not uncommon among several generations of French tenors and sopranos. This is, however, an extraordinarily full-bodied instrument that, unlike those who sing his repertoire nowadays, retains a marvelous headiness through the entire range; one finds no trace of the brassiness so often encountered among contemporary dramatic tenor voices. On the debit side, Affre—a presentable trill notwithstanding&#8212...