The back of Marston’s jewel box has a blurb identifying Rosa Ponselle as “arguably this century’s greatest soprano.” Okay, no argument here, although these discs are made up of material from 1936-37, when the singer was at the end of her operatic career (she left the stage in 1937, still only 40 years old but fearful of high notes and with a voice settling into a mezzo tessitura). Like Volume 1 of Marston’s “Rosa Ponselle On the Air” series, the 40 tracks on these two discs were taken from aluminum and acetate discs made from radio broadcasts. Quality is variable but as always with this label, it’s as good as possible given the original sources. Ponselle said her broadcast performances captured her voice best and she preferred them to her studio recordings. The first part of that statement is arguable; nevertheless, there is some wonderful singing on these discs.
In addition to radio broadcasts the set includes Carmen excerpts from a 1936 MGM screen test and a sequence drawn from a Cincinnati concert. Most of the tracks are of songs, including a lot of popular material and show songs that, though done well, leave me underwhelmed. Some of the repertoire, like Farley’s “The Night Wind”, is pure camp; some, like “Annie Laurie”, consists of traditional songs given the full treatment; and others, like Schubert’s “Ave Maria”, find Ponselle transcending the soupy orchestra and sentimental arrangements with some of the most extraordinarily beautiful singing and legato phrasing you’ll ever hear.
Operatic staples such as “Bel raggio” from Rossini’s Semiramide and a moving “Ave Maria” from Verdi’s Otello are there along with now less-familiar items such as “Tu che invoco” from Spontini’s Vestale and “O divina Afrodite” from Romani’s Fedra. There’s a June, 1936 broadcast excerpt of a staged 75th birthday party for Ernestine Schumann-Heink with Ponselle singing “Home Sweet Home” and Brahms’ “Wiegenlied”, making those familiar items pulse with life. Those tracks also feature some treacly dialogue between Ponselle and Schumann-Heink in which we hear the latter speaking, sounding uncannily like Maria Ouspenskaya in the old Wolf Man movies. The voices of announcers overlapping with orchestral introductions and some hokey dialogue along the lines of, “Hey, that’s Rosa Ponselle. She lives on our street,” complete the nostalgic feeling of listening to the family Philco in the 1930s.
