Immortal Voices

That Fernando de Lucia record, for example: its design puts practically every sleeve I’ve ever seen to shame, and its liner notes address an imaginary reader whose entire breed has long since gone down to the dust (“The uninitiated may be disturbed by the liberties taken with the score by the tenor, but they remain as a faithful and imperishable tribute to the art of this tenor and his colleagues of three quarters of a century ago, to whom music was simply a means to exhibit their own peculiar vocal qualities”). It is remarkable.

Such finds are the particular abiding joy of the pack rat: compact histories which are all suggestion and no statement, entirely inconclusive documents whose wealth deepens as their time under the magnifying glass lengthens.
That Fernando de Lucia record, for example: its design puts practically every sleeve I’ve ever seen to shame, and its liner notes address an imaginary reader whose entire breed has long since gone down to the dust (“The uninitiated may be disturbed by the liberties taken with the score by the tenor, but they remain as a faithful and imperishable tribute to the art of this tenor and his colleagues of three quarters of a century ago, to whom music was simply a means to exhibit their own peculiar vocal qualities”). It is remarkable.
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