Phonograph cylinders are the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their heyday, a name which has been passed on to their disc-shaped successor, these hollow cylindrical objects have an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which can be reproduced when they are played on a mechanical cylinder phonograph. The first cylinders were wrapped with tin foil but the improved version made of wax was created a decade later, after which they were commercialized. In the 1910s, the competing disc record system triumphed in the marketplace to become the dominant commercial audio medium.
The Metropolitan Opera is an American opera company based in New York City, currently resident at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, situated on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Referred to colloquially as "the Met", the company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as the general manager. The company's music director has been Yannick Nézet-Séguin since 2018.
Ezio Fortunato Pinza was an Italian opera singer. Pinza possessed a rich, smooth and sonorous voice, with a flexibility unusual for a bass. He spent 22 seasons at New York's Metropolitan Opera, appearing in more than 750 performances of 50 operas. At the San Francisco Opera, Pinza sang 26 roles during 20 seasons from 1927 to 1948. Pinza also sang to great acclaim at La Scala, Milan, and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London.
David Hall was a sound archivist and writer.
Édouard Juda Colonne was a French conductor and violinist, and a champion of the music of Berlioz and other eminent 19th-century composers.
Allan James Foley, distinguished 19th century Irish bass opera singer, was born at Cahir, County Tipperary. In accordance with the prevailing preference for Italian artists, he changed the spelling of his name and was always known as 'Signor Foli.'
Sapho is a pièce lyrique in five acts. The music was composed by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Cain and Arthur Bernède, based on the novel (1884) of the same name by Alphonse Daudet. It was first performed on 27 November 1897 by the Opéra Comique at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Place du Châtelet in Paris with Emma Calvé as Fanny Legrand. A charming and effective piece, the success of which is highly dependent on the charisma of its lead soprano, it has never earned a place in the standard operatic repertory.
Alfred Hertz was a Prussian-born conductor.
Maurice Arnold Renaud was a cultured French operatic baritone. He enjoyed an international reputation for the superlative quality of his singing and the brilliance of his acting.
Richard Alexander Crooks was an American tenor and a leading singer at the New York Metropolitan Opera.
Antonio Scotti was an Italian baritone. He was a principal artist of the New York Metropolitan Opera for more than 33 seasons, but also sang with great success at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and Milan's La Scala.
Florence Easton was an English dramatic soprano of the early 20th century. She was one of the most versatile singers of all time, appearing in more than 100 roles, covering a wide range of styles and periods, from Mozart, Meyerbeer, Gounod, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, Strauss, Schreker and Krenek. She sang virtually every Wagnerian soprano part, large and small, from Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer onwards, including Brünnhilde in Götterdämmerung.
Daniel William Quinn was an American tenor. He was one of the first American singers to become popular in the new medium of recorded music. Quinn was a very successful recording artist whose career spanned from 1892 to 1918. Quinn recorded many of his hits in the legendary Tin Pan Alley of New York City.
Milka Ternina was a Croatian dramatic soprano who enjoyed a high reputation in major American and European opera houses. Praised by audiences and music critics alike for the electrifying force of her acting and the excellence of her singing in both German and Italian works, her career was curtailed at its peak in 1906 by a medical condition which paralyzed a nerve in her face.
James Henry Mapleson was an English opera impresario and a leading figure in the development of opera production and of the careers of singers in London and New York in the mid-19th century.
Gianni Bettini was a gentleman inventor and a pioneer audiophile who invented several phonograph improvements. He is best known for having made the first recordings of the voices of several very famous singers and other celebrities of the 1890s. Few of these recordings have survived.
Emilio De Marchi was an Italian operatic tenor. He had a significant career during the late 19th and early 20th century, appearing at major theatres on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1900, he entered the annals of musical history as the creator of the role of Cavaradossi in Giacomo Puccini's Tosca. Today, however, he has largely been forgotten because, unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not leave a legacy of commercial gramophone or phonograph recordings.
Giuseppe Cremonini was an Italian operatic tenor who had a prominent opera career in Europe and the United States during the last decade of the nineteenth century.
Andreas Dippel was a German-born operatic tenor and impresario who from 1908 to 1910 was the joint manager of the New York Metropolitan Opera.
Historical classical music recordings are generally classical music recordings made prior to the stereo era of vinyl disc recording, which began around 1957.
