Licia Albanese learned Tatyana’s Letter Scene from EUGENE ONEGIN in Russian at the request of Leopold Stokowski especially for this recording. Albanese reportedly coached the aria with baritone George Cehanovsky, a Met comprimario stalwart who was married to Elisabeth Rethberg.
EUGEN ONEGIN – Letter Scene – Licia Albanese – Stokowski cond
Jussi Björling’s was the first tenor voice I fell in love with. After I had discovered opera in 1959, my parents gifted me with a two-LP set of excerpts from RCA’s Verdi and Puccini catalog. The singers on those records – Licia Albanese, Roberta Peters, Zinka Milanov, Jan Peerce, Robert Merrill, Leonard Warren, and Giorgio Tozzi, in addition to Björling – assumed god-like status for me.
It was the plaintive sweetness of Björling’s voice that really ignited my imagination; and thru the ensuing years, it has often been the tenors – Tucker, Bergonzi, Corelli, Vickers, Pavarotti, Domingo – who provided the greatest thrills and chills in the many performances I have seen and heard.
In the early 1930s, Björling made his first aria recordings, in Swedish. On a quiet afternoon yesterday, I was listening to – and savoring – the youthful lyricism of this remarkable voice; he had turned twenty in 1931:
Jussi Björling – TOSCA aria – in Swedish
By the end of that decade, Björling’s career was well underway, his voice was in full bloom, and he was singing in Italian:
Jussi Björling – O Paradiso – L’AFRICANA
He made many recordings in the ensuing years, including the Verdi REQUIEM under Fritz Reiner, which was recorded in June 1960; three months later, Björling died.
The great tenor was buried at Stora Tuna in the Dalarna province of his native land.
Two decades before the Reiner recording of the REQUIEM was made, Björling recorded the Ingemisco from the Verdi masterpiece:
Oberon's Glade 