Ivan Petroff sings great baritone arias: Pagliacci, La Favorita,

I Puritani, Rigoletto,

The Barber of Seville, Macbeth.

Excerpts from the complete Rigoletto recording.

It is remarkable that Don Gabor made recordings of complete operas available on his Remington label. It shows that he had a full blooded catalog in mind. Some ready recordings were bought. There are at least two Remington recordings which appeared on the Allegro-Royale label as well: La Bohème and La Traviata.

Remington opera recordings were made in Italy except for that one Madame Butterfly with Daniza Illitsch, Ratko Delorco, Hildegard Rössel-Majdan, and conductor Wilhelm Loibner, and the one with the unknown conductor Hans Doehrer directing Weber's Der Freischütz with Karl Heinz Tuttner, Karl Duffek, Dora Paludan, and Hanni Löser, and there is the La Bohème 3Lp recording with Illitsch, Delorco, Dutch singer Theo Baylé and Loibner conducting. If not produced by Marcel Prawy. it was Prawy who obtained the tapes.

The new MUSIRAMA opera recordings were all of Italian origin but now produced by Laszlo Halasz, former director of the New York City Opera Company, who, after his resignation, became Recording Director of Remington Records Inc. Naturally he knew many venues, artists and conductors. His first production was Turandot. In several cases Robert Blake is mentioned as recording engineer.
But the early Remington catalog started with a complete Rigoletto.

	With most of the operas, Remington supplied a libretto for one dollar extra. The librettos were bought from various publishers. Sometimes the name of the record company and the reference number of the release were printed on the cover.

RLP-199-58/60
Verdi: Rigoletto
Orlandina Orlandini (soprano), Lidia Melani (mezzo-soprano), Gino Sarri (tenor), Ivan Petroff (baritone), Mario Frosini (bass), Edio Peruzzi (bass), Rina Benucci (mezzo-soprano), and conductor Erasmo Ghiglia. Released in 1952.
Warren De Motte says in his Long Playing Record Guide: "Remington's forces know their way around this score. They perform without distinction, albeit with competence and the recording is fair."

R-199-62/3
Puccini: Tosca
Vassilka Petrova, Eddy Ruhl, Pierre Campolonghi, Duilio Baronti, Melchiorre Luise. Orchestra of the Maggio Fiorentino and Chorus of the Teatro Communale and conductor Emilio Tierri.
Note: This recording was listed in the 1952 Remington catalog but did not appear in the catalog issued by Remington in 1953, though the set is evaluated by Warren Demotte in his 1955 Long Playing Record Guide.

R-199-74/2
Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana
Vassilka Petrova, Eddy Ruhl, Ivan Petroff, Rina Benucci, Lidia Malani. Orchestra of the Maggio Fiorentino and Chorus of the Teatro Communale and conductor Erasmo Ghiglia. Released in May 1952.

Laura Homonnay-Demilio evaluates:

I've been collecting opera recordings for over thirty years, since my mid-teens. Even at the risk of compromising sound quality, there was always something compelling about the ambience of particular older recordings, and I'm not just referring to the historical 78's, both acoustical and electric, in the archives, but to the early mono LP recordings as well. The long play record came into being during the summer of 1948, introduced by Columbia (although there have been some versions of 33 1/3 rpm since before 1930, actually introduced by Victor, nothing was commercially feasible for the recording industry market until after the second World War, due to economics or otherwise). RCA Victor was a little slow to jump back on the bandwagon, introducing, instead, 45 rpm records on small disks and not conceding to LP's until a year later, so that in 1949 and early 1950 Columbia predominated with complete opera sets. However, right at the same time, other record companies in the immediate era sprang up with generally low-budget offerings on their labels. By 1951 all major American record companies and a lot of long-obscure and defunct ones had opera sets on LP. Some examples: Columbia - Columbia, Parlophone and Pathé in Europe; Entré - an American budget label re-issuing Columbia's complete opera sets from the days of early electric 78's, 1927-1932; RCA Victor - His Master's Voice in Britain and Europe with their Historical Series, also re-releasing their earliest electrical complete opera sets; later they also owned Camden, an offshoot of RCA in the United States; Cetra - from Italy, known as Cetra-Soria in the United States due to distributor; American Decca - licensing the Deutsche Grammophon catalog; London Records - Decca in Great Britain; Westminster Urania - with many recordings made in Germany. And of course there was Remington and the other Gabor labels Plymouth and Merit. Note: Towards the 1960's, even more labels came out, Mercury, Angel/EMI, Nonesuch, Turnabout (part of the Everest-Cetra conglomerate in later years), Capitol, Seraphim, Victrola (these last three were budget Victor lines, the last label also featuring recordings of historical interest), Richmond (budget London). The only two Remington opera sets I own were both recorded in 1951: Cavalleria Rusticana and Tosca. What they have in common, besides their year of release, are the principal singers: Edward Ruhl and Vassilka Petrova. Despite accusations of "second rate" orchestration, the Cavalleria Rusticana, especially, is performed with such heart that it seems an unfair shot to call it second rate. If some of the singing leaves much to be desired by its principals - all of the singing as far as Petrova is concerned - the chorus is acceptable and there's a certain verve and brio in the orchestra, however crudely emitted in the rendition on discs pressed from inferior material. Edward Ruhl's voice has a muffled, bottled quality to it, but I've certainly heard worse tenors, many of them big names. A listener can relax with Ruhl's average performance and not find any particular glaring fault with it, but Vassillka Petrova's presence in this recording goes beyond her being no doubt an inexpensive hire. She sounds like a bad Zinka Milanov, and Milanov, who never had a particularly beautiful voice, was painful to listen to when she was well past her prime, in the late 1950's; every listener wonders why RCA Victor couldn't pair the eminent Jussi Bjorling with a better Tosca in the 1957 studio recording. Petrova was referred to as a camp artifact in Paul Gruber's The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Recorded Opera (W.W. Norton & Company, New York 1992), and any listener can understand why. Glamorous photos of an obviously attractive young woman on the covers of both opera albums only give rise to the "What! Was she only chosen for her looks?" speculation. If Petrova can squawk her way through a painfully strident "Voi lo sapate, O Mamma," and the "Tu Qui, Santuzza" confrontation duet with Ruhl's Turridu, her Easter Hymn is a trial to listen to. Take the "a" off Petrova and replace the "v" with "ff" and there's a listenable Alfio by baritone Ivan Petroff. Somehow this version of Cavelleria manages to not only go forward, but keep a listener's attention as far as interest in the performance which has "Touring company level" as Warren DeMotte calls this set in his 1955 Long Playing Record Guide. Yet it still has more soul, personality, and feeling to it than any post-1980 digital cd production, where jet-setting performers record in different studios and the recordings are anonymously mixed by engineers. On the Remington "Tosca" Ruhl gets by acceptably, but the orchestration is a little less forceful. Campolonghi's Scarpia is as good as many on the major studio releases; he acquits himself very well in this performance: menacing, firm-toned, and robust. The recording is worth his voice alone. If he's not Leonard Warren or Ettore Bastiannini, it's still a better listen than Tito Gobbi's, who was marvelous to watch in films and a great master at characterization, but still left a little to be desired in always keeping entirely in tune - or having a particularly attractive voice. If a gutsy, coarse, verismo Santuzza is acceptable on Cavelleria Rusticana, so that a lot of the squillante can be excused for dramatic effect, on Tosca it is indefensible. Tosca, after all, is supposed to be an operatic performer. Gutsy isn't even a factor in Petrova's singing. There is no bottom to her voice; her lower register fades out, unsupported, as badly as her high notes. In several instances, most notably when she is heard singing off-stage "performing for the Queen", while Scarpia plots in his office, she entirely misses her ascent, so that it comes out a strangled, truncated bark. This has been referred to as The Tosca From Hell, a party item, and other epithets by snickering cultists, and there's no denying it. Because of the languor and apparent disinterest in the orchestra's playing, one eagerly waits for this Tosca to end, after getting through the aghast hearing of Scarpia's murder, which is not to be missed - the faded-sounding struggle to regain breath control, the incapacity to even spew a hair-raising "Quest' il bacio di Tosca!" which every soprano on her outs can manage to muster. I wouldn't miss owning these Remington recordings for the world. I intend to collect more - to be taken back into the world of nearly 60 years ago, the dawn of long-play records, the struggle for often even less than steady footing in the market by obscure and bargain/budget record companies, compels and enchants the listener, harkening back to an era that will never be resurrected. Laura Homonnay-Demilio (USA)

R/199-80/3
Puccini: La Boheme
Daniza Illitsch, Ratko Delorco, Hildegarde Rössel-Majdan, Ruthilde Boesch, Theo Baylé, Marion Rus, Georg Oeggl, and Emil Siegerth. Austrian Symphony and Chorus, Wilhelm Loibner.

R-199-81/3
Puccini: Madame Butterfly
Daniza Illitsch, Ratko Delorco, Hildegarde Rössel-Majdan, August Jaresch, Jovan Gligor, Emil Siegerth. Austrian Symphony and Chorus, Wilhelm Loibner.

Libretto published by Edwin F. Kalmus, New York, N.Y.

R-199-98/3
Verdi: La Traviata
Frances Schimenti, Arrigo Pola, Pierro Passerotti, Virgilio Stocco, Loretta di Lelio, Walter Mona Chesi, Anna Marcangeli, Carlo Platania, Opera Rome, Luigi Ricci conducting. Chorus master in Giuseppe Conca. The Allegro-Royale reference number is 1544/1545.

	Picture above is of Frances Schimenti. At left the Allegro-Royale disc with highlights from La Bohème with the same cast as on the Remington issue.

R/199/99-3
Puccini: La Boheme
Frances Schimenti, Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, Mafalda Micheluzzi, Giovanni Ciavola, Victor Tatozzi, Enzo Tita, Pierro Pazerotti, Teatro dell´opera Roma, Alberto Paoletti, conductor.
Biographical details of the singers and the conductors were always scarce and more often not available. The Allegro Royale release with highlights of La Boheme gives the follwing briographical information:

R/199/100-3
Weber: Der Freischütz
Karl Heinz Tuttner, Karl Duffek, Dora Paludan, Hanni Löser, Alfons Kral, Kurt Wehofschütz, Austrian State Symphony, Hans Doehrer conducting.

R/199/117-3
Mozart: Cosi fan tutte
Erna Hassler (soprano), Hetty Plümacher (contralto), Käthe Nentwig (soprano), Albert Weikenmeier (tenor) , Karl Hoppe (baritone) and Joseph Dunnwald conducting the Stuttgart Tonstudio Orchestra.
This performance of Cosi fan tutte was listed in Schwann of July 192 as a release on the Peiod label, Reference 555. (In December this recording was first published in Great Britain on the Nixa label.)
Period 555 was the first complete Cosi fan tutte available on Lp in the US. Half a year later, in December 1952, Columbia presented the 1952 Metropolitan Opera production conducted by Fritz Stiedry and sung by Eleanor Steber and Richard Tucker on SL-122. Apparently Columbia made haste to quickly release the recording. In 1953 The Long Player mentions both the Period 555 and the Remington R-199-117/3 box sets. In January 1953 it was offically announced that Laszlo Halasz had become Remington Recording Director. Could be that Halasz would follow a different A&R strategy and the rights to issue the Dünnwald recording were obtained along with other recordings from Stuttgart.

R-199-169/3
Puccini: Turandot
Gertrude Grob-Prandl, Antonio Sprùzzola-Zola, Norman Scott, Renata Ferrari-Ongaro, Angelo Mercuriali, Mariano Caruso, and Marcello Rossi, Franco Capuana conducting the 'Teatro la Fenice' (Venice Opera Company).

R-199-175/2
Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana
Teresa Apolei, Pina Geri, Antonio Spruzzola Zola, Piero Campolonghi, Letizia Del Col and the 'Teatro la Fenice' conducted by George Sebastian.
This set replaced the earlier recording of conductor Erasmo Ghiglia with Vassilka Petrova, Edward Ruhl, Ivan Petrov and Benucci.

R-199-178/3
Verdi: Aida
Mary Curtis, Oralia Dominguez, Umberto Borso, Ettore Bastianini, Norman Scott, Enzo Feliciati (on label and box wrongly spelled as Felicitati), and Uberto Scaglioni. Franco Capuana, conducting Orchestra and Chorus of the 'Teatro la Fenice'. Released in 1955.

R-199-200/3
Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor
R-199-200/3 - Lucia di Lammermoor (Donizetti) with Orchestra and Chorus of the "La Fenice" Theater in Venice and Renata Ongaro, Giacinto Prandelli, Philip Maero and Norman Scott. There was an entry in a Schwann Artists edition which wrongly attributed this performance to conductor Laszlo Halasz.
The set with reference number R-199-200/3 was released in the fall of 1956 and listed in November's Schwann Catalog of that same year. The conductor was Jonel Perlea.

Rudolf A Bruil - Page first published December 18, 2008