Marcel Journet (1867 - 1933)

Note by J. B. Steane











References to 'in depth casting' may look like a bad pun when they are made with the allocation of the bass roles principally in mind. But so it is: for a performance of Il Trovatore or Rigoletto to meet the standards of a gala occasion, the company must call upon its leading bass or pay for one of the few international top-liners. If the tones which rouse the troops with that opening 'All'erta' lack the thrill of sonorous authority, Il Trovatore gets off to a bad start. If the assassin's voice in Rigoletto is not as dark as his trade and dangerous as the Mantuan alleyway at night, then an essential flavour goes missing.

The old record catalogues showed due appreciation of this when for their star of stars, Enrico Caruso, they chose as his invariable companion-bass Marcel Journet. In trios from I Lombardi, Faust (NI 7859) and Samson et Dalila, quartets from Faust and Martha, the words at the end of the impressive list of singers were always 'and Journet'. In those famous recordings of the Sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor (NI 7834), the soprano (Sembrich, Galli-Curci or Tetrazzini), baritone (Scotti, De Luca, Amato) and the make-weights would change, but two remained constant: Caruso himself and the bass.

Journet also recorded duets with Caruso, as he did in this period with Geraldine Farrar, Giovanni Martinelli, Pasquale Amato and others. His solo records embraced a wide repertoire, French, Italian and German including some notable Wagnerian selections. And curiously it was in a Wagnerian excerpt that he made the one mistake of his career as a recording artist. In 1908 a pioneering attempt was made to record the Quintet from Die Meistersinger. Johanna Gadski was the soprano, and her difficult solo went well as indeed did the ensemble until about halfway through when a false entry was made by Journet, who stuck to it with disastrous results up to the final chords. A second 'take' put all right - and the first was issued! It is said that the single-sided disc appeared with a photograph of the five singers listening with every sign of delight to what was presumably a playback of their efforts. If a copy of that original envelope survives it must be something of a collector's piece.

Normally, reliability was Journet's trademark. It is the lot of basses to sing night after night, often in secondary roles that pass without comment - as long as the artist puts not a foot wrong or a phrase out of place - and Journet took his full share of these. After training in Paris and making his debut in 1891 at Béziers in La Favorite, he served his apprenticeship at La Monnaie in Brussels. He came to Covent Garden first in 1897, reappearing with a single year's absence in every summer season till 1909. In 1900 he became a stalwart of the Metropolitan in New York, singing with the company in a total of 416 performances over an eight year period. Seasons at Chicago , Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and Monte Carlo all brought success but were incidental to the great reputation he enjoyed at the Paris Opéra where he sang almost to the time of his death at the age of sixty-six in 1933. There was also a remarkable St. Martin's Summer when, from 1922 to 1929, Toscanini engaged him for some of the most important productions mounted during his second reign as Musical Director at La Scala, Milan.

It is often said that Journet spent much of his career under the shadow of one colleague or another. P.G. Hurst in The Golden Age Recorded writes that his 'undeserved part in the early days of his great career was to serve as a sort of understudy to Plançon'. That most accomplished of singers was also principal lyric bass at the Metropolitan, and it would have been with him and Edouard de Reszke in mind that the New York critic W.J. Henderson, recalling what in his view were the debased Huguenots performances of the post-de Reszke era, described Journet as 'a lamentably weak and colourless defender of the faith' (New York Sun, 28 Dec. 1912). Later it was pretty certainly the arrival of Chaliapin, and his commandeering of the best roles, that made Journet leave the company.

And yet he was not altogether undervalued in these years. His first two seasons at Covent Garden, for instance , gave him enviable opportunities with the Faust Méphistophélès, the Landgrave in Tannhäuser, the King in Hamlet, and old Marcel ('defender of the faith') in Les Huguenots. With the Metropolitan company he was tried out very thoroughly, and with evident success, on tour as their regular Colline, Ferrando and Sparafucile, Pharaoh to Plançon's Ramphis, Chaplain to Melba's Lucia, and so forth. By his second year he was sufficiently well-established to take part in the jealously observed opening night of the New York season as Capulet in Roméo et Juliette. This was, after all, 'the Golden Age of Opera', and the top jobs were as hard to get as... as I daresay they are nowadays.

Journet's international reputation was made in New York and London, but the likelihood is that the best years of his career were spent in Paris. His debut at the Opéra occurred on 2 October 1908 when he sang as the King in Lohengrin. From then till the time of his absence during the First World War he must have been in his absolute prime as a singer. Records testify to that, also making it clear that his prime was truly magnificent. He returned in 1919, and among the total of twenty-nine roles which he sang there at the Garnier were eight house or world creations. He also returned to Covent Garden, where he had last been heard in 1909. The role announced for the occasion had been that of Leporello in Don Giovanni, which would have further distinguished the famous revival of 1926. This failed to materialize but the following year he appeared as Escamillo in Carmen, a role he repeated in 1928 with the addition of a more consistently praised performance as the Father in Louise. In Milan his roles were the Father again, Golaud, Méphistophélès, Hans Sachs, the Wanderer (Siegfried), Dosfey (Khovanschina) and Simon Mago in the long awaited world premiere of Boito's Nerone: the plums, in fact.

It was an illustrious career. Yet, in all truth, what keeps it alive, and its exponent alive as a 'singer of the century', are the recordings he made principally in this prime period, from roughly 1908 to 1916. These of course include the associations with Caruso and other luminous contemporaries, but there is also a rich legacy of solos in which, no doubt, the most immediately impressive feature is the voice itself. A solidly comprehensive instrument, it serves in many capacities. Its main category, as basso cantante, brings to mind the finely even, well-nourished cello legato exemplified in his French arias, Dapertutto's Mirror song in Les Contes d'Hoffmann or Solomon's lyrical avowal of love for the Queen of Sheba in the opera by Gounod. His softening of the voice as for Mark Antony's reading aloud of the love-letter from Cleopatra makes newly attractive that piece of rare late-Massenet. By contrast, the sectarian relish ('Piff, paff, pouf, slay them all!') of the old Huguenot and the 'valse infernale' sung by the sire of Robert le Diable testify still more powerfully to the singer's versatility. Best of all may well be the solo from Adam's Le Chalet with Journet most persuasively groomed as the sonorous and accomplished successor to Pol Plançon, the most stylish and immaculate of basses on record.

The Wagnerian excerpts add another dimension. Later, when the electrical process of recording had come in, the fifty-year-old Journet would sing Wotan's Farewell and Sachs's 'Wahn' monologue with distinction, but they have not the glory of the records he made under the old process. Here the voice is kingly and he presents in turn a Wolfram for whom the low notes of the Evening Star solo give no trouble, a Wotan who could rejoice in the high Fs so embarrassing to many, and a Hagen with confidence in ever more weighty resources at command.

An unexpected treat to set alongside those is the Catalogue song of Leporello, an exemplary combination of lively characterization and scrupulous vocal style (NI 7822). Don Basilio's recipe for slander in Il barbiere di Siviglia, and the sardonic nihilism of Boito's Mefistofele also impress as being both effective and uncheapened. A disappointment among the Italian arias may be King Philip's in Don Carlos, even in its incomplete form too out-going and taken too fast. Fine, though, is the memento of his part in the Nerone premiere from 1924, showing the voice scarcely changed from what it had been ten, twenty years earlier.

It did eventually change, as the later records make clear. Though the low notes themselves are still there, the timbre has lost depth. More regrettably, the once impregnable firmness has begun to loosen, and the style to become less polished. A loss of focus and a tendency to aspirate were noted by English critics writing of his Escamillo in 1928. His part in the complete recording of Faust should have been a model of golden-age standards borne aloft to inspire the 1930s, but this late Méphistophélès is a grand routinier rather than a prince of devils.

Even so, these were the years in which Journet won from fellow singers tributes that stand by him in the hall of fame. Ezio Pinza, looking back in his autobiography from a position as the leading lyric bass of his time (and probably, as we see it, of the whole century), recalled his young days at La Scala where two professional giants showed him the way. One was Journet, the other Chaliapin. 'I have never heard anyone (he wrote) go from high notes to low ones with the ease and sonority of the middle-aged Journet'. He was an artist, said Pinza, who never stopped growing, and in those years was 'crowned with glory'. The other tribute comes from the tenor Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, implacable foe to mediocrity and jealous guardian of his country's status as the land of song. In his Voce parallele, first published in 1955, he remembers singing the role of Arnoldo at the Metropolitan to the Guglielmo Tell of Giuseppe Danise, then, at La Scala, with Benvenuto Franci and in Buenos Aires with Carlo Galeffi. None of these eminent compatriots impressed him as did the veteran Frenchman. 'Heroism, plasticity, magnanimity, power: behold in them the voice, the art and the soul, of Marcel Journet.'


© 1998 J. B. Steane

All rights of the producer and of the owner of the recorded work reserved.
Unauthorised copying, public performance and broadcasting of this recording prohibited.