Emilio de Gogorza (1872 -1935)

Note by John Steane











Among the most stylish singers of his day, Gogorza was also distinguished by his having no stage career but, from the first, a particularly close association with the gramophone. His voice was vibrant and of a richly attractive quality, and he made plenty of operatic records which show him, in that respect and as far as we can judge, well-equipped for the standard baritone roles, especially those in Mozart and the French repertoire. He was, however, short in stature (described as a ‘dapper little man’) and extremely short-sighted, lost without his spectacles. His recitals were much admired and it was on these that his reputation as a live’ singer was based. That was principally in the United States. There were also the gramophone (or phonograph) records, which made his name well-known throughout the world.

Born in 1872 or 1874 (reference books vary, agreeing on May 29 as the day), he was a contemporary of Caruso (born 1873). That means he was a singer enjoying the prime of his still youthful voice and approaching maturity as an artist at the turn of the century. This was also the time of the first commercial recordings, and both Caruso and Gogorza were in the first generation of singers who took to the new medium. Caruso of course became the most famous and successful of all, but Gogorza got there first and was himself instrumental in directing the great tenor’s career as a recording artist.

That would have been early in 1906, when Caruso was still new to the Metropolitan Opera and to the American public, with whom Gogorza was by that time well-established. He had acquired an enviable position as advisor to the Victor recording company on vocal matters and particularly the engagement of singers. That he could do this over a long period without, apparently, making personal enemies or causing a more general resentment among these temperamental people owed much to his background: he was an American and a European, fluent in Spanish, Italian, French and English. He had, moreover, a broad musical experience which went back to his upbringing in a musical household and included singing as a boy soprano in English choirs.

Brooklyn, New York, was his birthplace, but the family left almost immediately after his birth for Spain. The father’s business was with a shipping line and this involved the family in frequent travel. The boy seems to have been brought up in France and England, where he sang in the choir of Brompton Oratory. He himself refers to this period in his life in a letter to Caruso’s son, in which he tells that among the men singing in the choir were Gayarré and Santley (and adds a well-deserved exclamation mark). It is also reported that he was drawn to the attention of the Duke of Norfolk (head of the leading Roman Catholic family in Britain), and that the Duke introduced him to Windsor, either to St. George’s Chapel or to sing in a concert at the Castle, or (of course) both. He trained then as an adult singer in Paris and New York, where he made his debut in 1897.

This took place at a concert in which he appeared as ‘assisting’ artist to the great Marcella Sembrich, which did him no harm at all. The critics attended, he received good notices, she liked him, and he thus came in at the top. This was also the year in which the first stirrings of a recording enterprise you couldn’t call it yet an industry made themselves felt among the celebrity singers of New York. Years ago, Gianni Bettini, a socialite and an amateur enthusiast with genuine inventiveness and plenty of money, developed an ‘improved’ recording apparatus and at his well-attended parties persuaded the singers among his guests to try it out. From studios on 5 th Avenue he was soon able to produce a substantial catalogue of cylinders by stars of the Metropolitan Opera, Sembrich among them. It was in this way that Gogorza was first associated with the record business, which soon became very profitable for him. In the early years of the new century his voice came to be known, under different names on different record labels. For Zonophone he recorded as Carlos Francisco and Edward Franklin, for Eldridge Johnson as Monsieur Fernand and Herbert Goddard (also as Francisco); and eventually he appeared as himself with his first record for the Victor company in 1903.

These records he produced in vast numbers, often repeating the titles, which were mostly songs of a homely nature (no great composers among their writers) and a sprinkling of popular operatic arias. The first ‘Dio possente’ (Disc 1 track 1) heard in the present collection dates from these early years, and we note the vividly forward sound of the voice with its flicker of vibrato, very much of the period. Along with his work as a singer, he was employed by the man in charge of Victor recordings, his friend Calvin Child, to scout for talent and recruit artists for their catalogue. He was able to bring most of the leading singers in, including Sembrich and Emma Eames who later became his wife, and in 1906 he secured Caruso. The arrangements were mutually beneficial: the singers felt that he, a professional singer himself, would look after their interests, as he did with Caruso, advising him (against his own inclination) to hold out for royalties rather than a down-payment. It may also have helped that Gogorza, as an artist who did not appear in opera, was not seen as a rival.

He did sing a complete operatic role in public on at least one occasion. This was a concert performance of Eugene Onegin given in 1906, 14 years before its premiere at the Met. That would have been a collector’s piece to be sure, and records preserve no memento. They do, however, give us a strong feeling for what might have been. A sample of 15 roles is available even in the selection included here and there are several others, the two famous Sevillians for instance, the ebullient barber and the posturing toreador. Of those that we hear now, it is quite remarkable how the voice-character changes from one to another. The two serenades (1/19 and 20), though recorded in direct sequence and fitted on to the same side of the original record, are completely in character, as for a stage performance. The Don Giovanni is an aristocrat, the Mephistopheles a pleb; the one suavely inviting, the other vindictively satirical. Then there is the hardened voice he produces for Count di Luna in the duet from Il trovatore (1/14), the ever-changing expression on the face of Rigoletto (we ‘see’ it through the voice), and, finest of all, the heart-broken friend and husband, stirred by betrayal into the alternate lyricism and declamation of ‘Eri tu’ (1/11).

That (it maybe objected) is the kind of accomplishment music critics commonly point out in their newspaper reports, assuming that in doing so they have said something about the singing, whereas it is only a component of a singer’s art, complementing the skills and natural gifts which are essential. For these, we might listen again to that ‘Eri tu’, with its perfection of legato in the ‘O dolcesse’ section, its beautifully controlled diminuendo on the high E of ‘seno’, and the fine command of range from the low A to the high G. Or we could take the Massenet arias which are possibly his loveliest recordings of all (1/4 and 5). In both, the voice has been rounded, the vibrato assimilated, the breath in ready supply to support those lingering phrases. And then how well the technique lends itself to the bell-ringer’s song from Paladilhe’s La Patrie (1/6) where the demand is for a strong, vigorous attack in a style which still sings rather than bashes. And, though the repertoire hardly tests his capacity in florid work, the ease of movement in the cadenza of Hamlet’s drinking song (1/3) suggests at least potential mastery. He is a remarkably complete singer.

In his lifetime he was acclaimed as a concert artist. Richard Aldrich wrote appreciatively of him in the New York Times:

There were opportunity and reason for admiring it [his singing] yesterday for admiring the fine quality of his voice, the finish, length and intelligence of his phrasing, the musical intelligence and sincerity that he brought to his work. He commands a variety of style and expression that enables him to give a proper interpretation to a varied and contrasted program of songs... Three Spanish songs of Alvarez, a modern song composer much admired in Spain but much less known outside of her borders, Mr Gogorza sang with especial fervour and conviction and with deep expression... His diction and pronunciation were excellent.
(January 29, 1909).

Such singing as Emilio de Gogorza gave at his recital in Aeolian Hall yesterday afternoon was not only a great and keenly felt enjoyment to the discriminating listeners with whom the hall was well-filled. It was also a salutory lesson for any who would accept it as such, an inspiration in its showing of what finished art, a comprehensive understanding of style, fine technical acquirement and understanding, persistence in the pursuit of high artistic ideals can accomplish... Such a lesson and such an inspiration are needed in this day and generation.
(November 22, 1920).

In that second review Aldrich mentions the song by Debussy, ‘Voici que le printemps’, which closes the present programme (2/17), as ‘sung in a beautiful mezza voce , in which he quite recaptured the poetic suggestion of the song’. There were also songs which the recorded repertoire failed to represent a Russian group for instance, with Rachmaninov’s ‘In the silence of the night’ and Mussorgsky’s ‘The Goat’. Of what was recorded, the second disc gives a very fair sample. How charming he is, for example, in the other French songs (2/18 and 19), and how supple the movement of his voice, a counterpart to the proud style of a traditional Spanish dancer, in ‘La paloma’ (2/5). That was a song he recorded five times at least, something of a visiting-card as ‘Clavelitos’ was for Victoria de los Angeles.

He retired from public performance and from his position with the Victor company around 1930. His marriage to Emma Eames had broken up some years before (she still used ‘Emma Eames de Gogorza’ in her signature as late as 1928, but not long afterwards the very mention of his name was forbidden in her house as, incidentally, was that of F.D.Roosevelt, the Roosevelt dime being illegal currency there). He became Curtis Professor of Singing in Philadelphia from 1926 to 1940 and died in New York on May 10, 1949.

Herman Klein, writing for The Gramophone magazine in July 1926, paid tribute to him as ‘a finished artist’ and ‘a charming man’. As he recalled, the New York critics of those years could be severe but he won their praise for ‘the beauty of his voice, the neatness of his phrasing, the purity of his style’. He adds his own tribute as a fellow worker in the field, he having held a comparable position in the Columbia company: ‘A delightful singer under any circumstances, he has himself been a perfect model for reproducing his own voice and style, as Caruso reproduced his, in a wholly natural manner without modification or change or effort of any sort’. To that I think we might wish to add that he now comes over to us as a singer very much of his period. His style goes with the trimmed moustache, the fastidious social manners, the cosmopolitan assurance of another age. But these (we know it from the warmth of his singing) are as the clothing, the formal cover, of a humanity which encompasses the best civilised qualities of many nations, and gives them expression within the dignified restraints of his proud Spanish soul.


© 2005 John Steane

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