— Teatro Nuovo

Mr. Goddard, et al.

One of the most extraordinary recording pioneers - and one of the most appealing singers ever to leave traces of his voice - was the Spanish (or possibly Cuban) baritone Emilio de Gogorza. He was born in 1874 (or maybe 1873 or 1872), and as you can tell already there is a certain amount of mystery about his origins.

De Gogorza, undated photograph probably c. 1905

He arrived more or less accidentally in Brooklyn, because (in some tellings) his father was a shipping executive and that is where the family happened to be passing through at the time. At the age of three months he may have been taken back to Cadiz, and he apparently spent much of his childhood in France except for several years at an English boarding school. There was clearly some money in the family, and there may have been some question of somebody wanting to disguise Jewish heritage, which still closed certain doors in business and society at the time.

In any case there is very little documentation of De Gogorza’s life apart from his own vague and variable recollections until he returned to New York in the 1890s. He was very quickly popular as a concert singer, married in 1896 to the daughter of a wealthy German investor, and involved in the American recording scene practically from its inception after getting a tip from a popular actor that Berliner’s Gramophone was “the instrument of the future.”

The Discography of American Historical Recordings credits him with 818 discs between 1899 and 1928, and that is not even counting duplicate “takes” of the same selection at the same session (sometimes more than one take was published), or the handful of early Edison cylinders. It’s by far the largest output of any classical singer of the era - and it was issued under at least four names besides his own.

Here is a mash-up of these different-but-same baritones - parts of four records all made in the frontier era of 1900-1902. These are far from the singer’s eventual best, but a fascinating glimpse into what is in effect the pre-history of organized classical recording.

Why so many names? Maybe, early on, to hold contracts with competing firms (“Edward Franklin” sang for Zon-O-Phone while “Herbert Goddard” was with Victor from its first year of existence). Maybe because the companies thought customers would trust “Monsieur Fernand” better than a Spaniard to render a chanson. Or perhaps to protect his growing reputation (he seems always to have sung under his true name in public) as a distinguished baritone who enjoyed social and musical prominence at a time when recording was not yet quite respectable?

A little later - when it had become respectable and then some - the concern may have been to protect the sales figures of Sr. De Gogorza, whose records were on the prestigious Red Seal series, from being drawn down by competition with “Sr. Francisco” who churned out so many delightful Spanish songs on the budget-priced black label.

By then De Gogorza was involved in the industry far beyond his vocal contributions: in 1903 he accepted the directorship of Victor’s vocal division. It was he who brought the great Caruso onto the roster (negotiating his contract down to the details of how many horses would draw the carriage fetching him to the studio). He supervised sessions, positioning the singers before the horn, repositioning them at the approach of powerful notes that might “blast” in reproduction, and calming their nerves as they confronted the novelty of trying to sing in the knowledge that whatever they did would be preserved, and could be criticized, forever.

How did a famous singer have time for this? De Gogorza, to his frustration, found opera impossible: short stature, a mild disability that gave him a limp, and extreme myopia all stood in his way, and his career remained confined to concerts. He recorded many arias, though, and they bear comparison with the best. In a few cases they probably are the best, one of those being Don Giovanni’s serenade.

He was also famous for singing convincingly in so many languages; that was rare at the time, but sprang naturally from his polyglot upbringing. An important point to note: he didn’t pronounce them all perfectly. A diction coach could easily compile a list of faults - but none of them really matters compared to his vividness and expression. He is communicating with us as a speaker of these languages, which is more important than mimicking their phonemes. When he sings “I love but thee; oh love thou me, and leave me not, dear heart,” the verses may be stilted, but we have the clear feeling that “Mr. Goddard” could have said such a thing on his own account, and said it from the heart.

Here are two samples of his English from mid-to-late career: a delicate song by Pier Adolfo Tirindelli, a school friend of Puccini who had emigrated to teach at Cincinnati Conservatory, and a potboiler by one Bruno Siegfried Huhn to the over-quoted verses of William Ernest Henry (“...bloodied but unbowed...captain of my soul…”) which the singer manages to make fresh and even exciting.

De Gogorza’s heart got him into a certain amount of adventure, which we will save for a follow-up episode dealing with his scandalous second marriage to Emma Eames (and her wonderful singing, and their duets). For now: he was still singing beautifully into his fifties, and according to reports still beyond them. The last we hear of him on records is in 1928, when he had just started his retirement job as professor at the Curtis Institute, and the technological breakthrough of the microphone allowed a closeup on the voice. (Condition? Unchanged. Pristine.)

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.

Footnote: the recordings in the initial mashup are

Caballero de gracia (Chueca and Valverde) 1900-1901 Zonophone
Mary of Argyll (Traditional) 1900 Zonophone
À Colombine (Massenet) 1902 Victor
Dear Heart (Mattei) 1901 Victor