Voice lessons with baritone Giuseppe Danise sharing bel canto wisdom with Giuseppe Valdengo

This is, after the Apollo Granforte video, probably the most important document I've published on this channel. Immense gratitude to Gianluigi Cortecci, who kindly sought it out on my behalf and provided it to me and to the rest of his audience. I cannot recommend his own channel highly enough. Please subscribe:    / @gianluigicortecci  
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In this 40-minute private audio recording, we hear the great Italian baritone Giuseppe Danise (1882-1963) around age 67 giving lessons on vocal emission and interpretation to the younger baritone, Giuseppe Valdengo.

This is, as far as I'm aware, the oldest audio recording of the earliest-born and earliest-educated singer in the act of instruction. Danise comes from a direct lineage in the Neapolitan school—specifically the conservatory at San Pietro a Majella. His teacher was Luigi Colonnese (one of Verdi's own baritones). Colonnese's teacher was Emanuelle De Roxas. De Roxas's teachers were Alessandro Busti and the castrato Girolamo Crescentini, who was born in 1762 and later became the director of the conservatory.

These lessons feature many of the hallmarks of what we know about the old school Italian school of singing:

—exacting attention to defects of emission
—the master imitating/exaggerating the student's defects and then demonstrating the correct method with his own voice
—the transmission of the finer points of style and interpretation via changes in intensity and timbre/vowel quality
—use of classic terminology and phrases like appoggiare, arrotondare, ingolato, aperto, coprire, la posizione, la vocale scura, etc.... only here, we get to hear the sound—the actual and real context to which the terminology belongs.

The recording also gives a tantalizing hint of what Danise would've sounded like in his prime in pieces for which we have no other recordings of him. Indeed, when he opens up to demonstrate for Valdengo, his voice at 67 is virtually undiminished, virtually identical to what it was in the recordings of the 1920s.

TRACKLIST:

00:00 - Rigoletto: Deh! non parlare misero
06:06 - Rigoletto: Veglia, o donna
11:54 - La favorita: Giardini dell'Alcazar recitative
14:36 - Falstaff: final notes of L'onore! Ladri!
15:50 - Il trovatore: Act I trio, opening recitative
22:00 - Il trovatore: Tutto è deserto... Il balen del suo sorriso
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This channel is primarily about vocal emission—aural examples of basically correct singing, correct impostazione—chiaroscuro, vowel clarity, firm and centered pitch, correct vibrato action, absence of throatiness or thickness, sounds free from constriction and from the acoustic noise that accompanies it—with occasional video examples that demonstrate what the body, face, mouth, jaw, and tongue look like when used with correct impostazione—the vocal emission of the one and only Italian school.

Caveat: I'm biased in favor of baritones and baritone literature, but if you want to learn about and listen to all the greatest singers in the old-school tradition, explore this spreadsheet (voice parts are separated by tabs): https://bit.ly/2W4qmE3