Gaston Micheletti et Conchita Supervia Carmen Non tu ne m'aimes pas Odéon 123 773
Gaston Micheletti et Conchita Supervia - Carmen - Non tu ne m'aimes pas - Odéon 123 773 energistré en avril 1931
A Corsican tenor, Micheletti spent the major part of his career (from 1925 to 1946) as one of the stalwarts in Paris at the Opera-Comique, where he was justly acclaimed in a wide variety of roles, admirably represented by this careful remastering of his Odeon records. Since he has until now been best known as partner to Supervia in her Carmen recordings and as Des Grieux to Emma Luart's Manon (already reissued by Vintage, 4/97), this solo recital is most welcome. His pleasing, plangent lyric tenor, with a quick vibrato typical of its time in his part of the operatic firmament, is used with the utmost artistry in a wide range of French repertory, most notably perhaps as Faust, Romeo, Wilhelm Meister and Werther, all four of whose solos are included here. Micheletti's high notes were not produced easily, so it's not surprising, indeed rather gratifying, to hear him take the high C of Faust's cavatine as an exquisitely produced head note. In an age when Francophone singers, particularly tenors, are at a premium, it is a pleasure to hear all these pieces sung with such a feeling for the shape and timbre of the text, nowhere more so perhaps than in the duet from Hoffmann, where he is partnered by Luart — a gently romantic rendering, both artists singing lightly off the text in a way you won't hear in any modern set of the work. The same can be said of the 'Chanson du Magali' from Mireille, where he sings with another of his Comique partners, Marie-Therese Gauley (who sang the Child in the premiere of L'enfant et les sortikges). The recital ends with four songs, two Italian ones and — utterly haunting — two Corsican folk-songs with guitar accompaniment, collector's pieces, as the originals are rarities.
Source : http://forgottenoperasingers.blogspot.fr/2012/04/gaston-micheletti-tavaco-corsica-1892.html
Conchita Supervía (8–9 December 1895 – 30 March 1936) was a highly popular Spanish mezzo-soprano singer who appeared in opera in Europe and America and also gave recitals.
She made her stage debut in 1910 at the young age of 15 at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, Argentina in Stiattesi's Blanca de Beaulieu. Then she sang in Tomás Bretón's Los Amantes de Teruel and as Lola in Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana.
In 1911 she sang the role of Octavian in the first Italian-language production of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.[3] In 1912 she appeared as Carmen at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in her native city, a role with which she would be associated for the rest of her career.
She made her American debut in 1915 as Charlotte in Massenet's Werther at the Chicago Opera, where she also sang in Mignon and Carmen.[2] Back in Europe by the end of the First World War she was invited to Rome, where she started the Rossini revival that made her world-famous – as Angelina in La Cenerentola, Isabella in L'italiana in Algeri and Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia, in the original keys.
All in all, she made more than 200 recordings mostly for the Fonotipia and Odeon labels, featuring not only her famous roles in opera but also a vast song repertory in Catalan, Spanish, French, Italian and English, as well as pieces from zarzuela and even operetta. (She had appeared in a legendary production of Franz Lehár's Frasquita at the Opéra Comique.)
In 1930, she made her London debut at the Queen's Hall. The following year she married a Jewish businessman from London, Ben Rubenstein, and settled there. (She already had a teenage son, George, from a previous association.)
Her Covent Garden debut was in 1934 in La Cenerentola and in 1935 she repeated that part, plus L'Italiana in Algeri and Carmen. In 1934, Supervía appeared in the Victor Saville British motion picture Evensong as a singer named Baba L'Etoile, opposite actor Fritz Kortner
Later, during her career, pregnancy forced her to cancel her planned appearances in the autumn of 1935. On 29 March 1936 she entered a London clinic to await the birth of her baby, which was stillborn on 30 March; a few hours later she herself died. She was buried with her baby daughter, in a grave designed by Edwin Lutyens, in the Liberal Jewish Cemetery in Willesden, northwest London. The grave, which had fallen into disrepair, was refurbished by a group of admirers and re-consecrated in October 2006
Source : Wikipedia