Bella figlia dell'amore

The great Act 3 duet from Giuseppe Verdi's early masterpiece Rigoletto (1851) as sung by two of the Metropolitan Opera's biggest stars of the Golden Age, Giuseppe De Luca (1876-1950) and Amelita Galli-Curci (1882-1963). The recording was made on December 16, 1927 in NY, with the Metropolitan Opera House Orchestra, Giulio Setti conductor, and released on HMV DA 1020 (matrix no. 7-54048).

The recording session is documented in Frederick Fellers' "The Metropolitan Opera on Record" (Greenwood Press, 1984). Galli-Curci and De Luca 6 record sides from 10:30am - 4:25pm at the Liederkranz Hall in NY (E 58th St. between Lexington and 4th Ave.). They recorded this, as well as 'Ah! veglia, o donna' from Rigoletto and 'Imponete' and 'Dite alla giovine' from La traviata. Also on that day they recorded two ensembles: the sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor ('Che mi frena') with Galli-Curci, De Luca, Louise Homer, Beniamino Gigli, Ezio Pinza, and Angelo Bada and the quartet from Rigoletto ('Bella figlia dell'amore') with Galli-Curci, de Luca, Homer, and Gigli.

The record is played on a restored portable Columbia Viva-Tonal 113a, ca. 1928. Sorry for the label shot. The camera on my Macbook's iSight is not good enough to handle faint script but I ensure you the performance itself makes up for any shortcomings of my video capturing capabilities.