Ernani: Da quel dì - Battistini/Corsi, Molinari/Arangi-Lombardi, Bastianini/Cerquetti, MacNeil/Price

Mattia Battistini & Emilia Corsi (1906) - 0:00 Enrico Molinari & Giannina Arangi-Lombardi (1930) - 4:13 Ettore Bastianini & Anita Cerquetti (1957) - 11:06 Cornell MacNeil & Leontyne Price (1962) - 15:11 Giuseppe Valdengo: “One day before rehearsal, Toscanini said, ’You know, yesterday I was thinking, and I want to suggest to you something that [Mattia] Battistini always used to do to keep his voice fluid and his breath controlled. Every day, Battistini vocalized, repeating the phrase from Ernani: “Da quel dì che t’ho veduta bella come un primo amore.“ Remember, Valdengo, that this phrase is like a study of bel canto, maybe better, and when you succeed in singing it with ease, your voice will be so malleable that any phrase in the baritone repertoire will seem like nothing.’ I implored the Maestro to explain to me how this could be: ’You see, this phrase is almost all written on the passaggio of the baritone voice, and to do it perfectly there needs to be no discernible break between the medium register and