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Like a Rock

Gabrielle Ritter-Ciampi, despite both her surnames, was French, born and raised in Paris, but her initial training was Italian. It came from her father, a tenor named Enzo Ciampi-Cellai. The “Ritter” is a pseudonym adopted by both her mother, a star soprano under the name of Cécile Ritter-Ciampi, and Cécile’s brother, the composer and pianist Théodore Ritter. Their father was yet another composer, Eugène Prévost, Gabrielle’s grandfather. An aunt, Alice Desgranges, was also a noted singer whose portrait was painted by Degas in 1878. So when Gabrielle was born eight years after that, it was into what you might call a musical family. 

Cécile Ritter-Ciampi in Paul et Virginie, whose premiere she sang

Perhaps that is why, despite early training, she initially resisted a professional career, making her debut (as Violetta) at the startlingly late age of 31. But once launched, she held the stage in her native city for 32 more, up to her farewell appearances in 1949 in an operetta by her frequent colleague Reynaldo Hahn. The solid bel canto training served her well.

Her technique was as solid as Fiordiligi claims her constancy to be when she sings “Come scoglio,” the virtuoso aria of which Ritter-Ciampi made the first recording ever in 1924. In many ways it’s still the best. Così fan tutte was a rarity in those days, just starting on its slow path to repertory status. Gabrielle had sung “Fleurdelyse” in a 1920 Opéra-Comique revival conducted by the operetta composer André Messager. That was in French, of course, but on her concert programs she often featured the aria in its original language, and recorded it that way. 

Gabrielle Ritter-Ciampi, undated publicity photo

“Scoglio” means rock in the sense of Gibraltar, anchored to the earth, or as Fiordiligi describes it, remaining “immobile against the winds and storms.” The winds and storms facing the singer here are frequent plunges to the middle and low register, a broken arpeggio reaching to high C that is way more awkward than it looks at a glance (Gabrielle sings it in pinpoint staccato), a fiendish passage in triplets crossing the register boundary repeatedly in both directions, and an unequivocal demand for strength in every single note of the two-octave-plus range: not one scale degree is left untested.  

Her record (slightly abbreviated to fit the time-limits of primitive discs) challenges all its successors to dislodge the rock. Firm tone high, upper-middle, lower-middle, low - no problem. A well-bound portamento line. Vigorous declamation (aided by the fact that France had, at that time, not yet forgotten the appoggiaturas that had fortified the strong syllables since Mozart’s time and before). No temptation to slow down or fudge those triplets. Ample breath span for the testing conclusion. A full-voiced trill on middle G.  

Any faults at all? OK, a few notes ride a little sharp. No harm in trying to sing it better still - but just matching it remains a challenge. And of course the limited sonics of acoustical recording deny us a full sense of the color of the voice. But electricals were just around the corner, and “Depuis le jour” gives us an idea of what couldn’t be captured just a few years earlier. It is a tart, clear, penetrating sound, more oboe than clarinet, in the tradition of Alice Verlet (see ROTW 27). No problem cutting through the symphonic waves of the orchestration, once again calm and collected when it comes to long breaths, vibrato utterly even throughout, and no over-darkened vowels even on the high notes.  

Teatro Nuovo puts great emphasis on learning from the singers who had never heard, or heard of, microphone singing - primitive recordings from more than a century ago, forming a link to the traditions of opera’s heyday and the infinite potential of the natural, unassisted human voice. Check this space regularly for samples, and click here for some pointers on how to listen.