Back in the Day

Our culture rewards newness and is quick to discard what it can’t or won’t understand, especially if it’s dusty. As such, it’s gratifying to know there are people who work to make old, sometimes obscure but often wondrous things accessible to us. Antiques dealers have been doing this for years, in a business in which the commercial stakes have gone up steadily in recent years.

Some enterprising CD and DVD issuers have been doing it, too. Naxos is a fairly small mid-price CD label, specializing in off-the-beaten track classical music. A similar mission was undertaken by Nonesuch in the 1960s. Naxos has a sublabel focusing on recordings of historical interest.

I found a Naxos Historical CD of a young Enrico Caruso at the public library the other day. It contains ten recordings made in Milan on April 11, 1902 by the Gramophone and Typewriter Company (the main competitor of the Victor Talking Machine Company). They were the first commercial recordings made by Caruso, and they propelled gramophone sales to a level never seen before, way past the phonograph, which used cylinders.

Caruso was well-suited to the role of popularizing gramophones in living rooms. His voice could peel paint from the back of any concert hall. These were the days before microphones or electronic amplification. They didn’t come along until the mid-1920s. The recording process consisted, essentially, of shouting at a needle, which would vibrate and carve grooves on a disc or cylinder. If anyone could get the most from this process, it was Caruso.

It’s interesting to listen to this CD and think of it being made more than 104 years ago. But I found myself going beyond historical curiosity to hear why Caruso is considered one of the best singers ever. He hits the big note, and his voice begins to expand. Bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, with fullness and character and no strain. It’s amazing.