VERY RARE 1903 Columbia Grand Opera Disc Record.. Marcella Sembrich Traviata.

$

230

VERY RARE!! 1903 Columbia Grand Opera Disc Record.. Marcella Sembrich Traviata.

Marcella Sembrich (1858-1935)

The Columbia Grand Opera Discs were a rushed gathering of amazing talent to compete with the Victor's New Celebrity Red Seal 5000 series.

As soon as the folks at Columbia heard about Victor they quickly threw tons of money at the most famous stars of the Metropolitan Opera House to make recordings for them.

The results were mixed, many of the operatic stars had not recorded before and Columbia was not well versed in recording them either.

Sembrich was paid $3,000.00 to make three records. To make that understandable to today's value of 3000 dollars would equal something in the neighborhood of 112,000.00 today!

Edward Easton blew a fortune on creating in two months time, 80 recordings by some of the greatest names in opera. Sembrich was at the time the reigning queen at the Metropolitan. Even Edward De Reszke made three recordings (his only).

Sembrich was a bit nervous at the recording session, and you can sense she was moving in front of the horn as she seems to focus right into the horn when she sang the strongest. You can hear this in the record.

This is a remarkably rare record. I cannot express this enough.  Here is your chance to have one of the Holy Grails in recording history. These were the "first" operatic recordings by top tier stars made domestically in the USA in disc form. And sadly, due to mistakes by Columbia in understanding their potential, they were dropped because they didn't sell well. By ending this originally brilliant program, they gave the Victor Company full bragging rights over their dominance in operatic stars. In fact, Victor resigned most of the Columbia artists to  contracts. 

More interesting records to come as I am slowly selling off my collection of pioneer recordings, I will have three this week.

This record was recorded somewhere between Dec 1902 to Jan 1903.

The record is good plus condition, it has some surface noise, and the volume of the record varies, due to how it was recorded by Sembrich.

These were her first commercial recordings made when she was 44.

It sounds like the announcer Harry Spencer is away from the horn a bit.  The piano is played by Charles Prince. The label is very clean as you can see in the pictures, as is the record.

It needs to be played with a larger turntable needle. But a remarkable piece of history in the recording field..

When sold, this record will be carefully packed in a new box..

You can hear this recording on YouTube at

https://youtu.be/VqmnB1UiKKo?si=frILd0FdAtCU_wpu