A unique collection of 4 original NBC Reference Recordings Broadcast Records.  
Includes the original shipping box with labels and stamps!
The Pacific Radio Hour of 1/17/55 (AKA The BELL TELEPHONE HOUR) Produced by BBD&O - Hollywood
Complete in 7 parts  4 78 speed records
GENUINE ACETATE RECORDS.  Aluminum covered by acetate.  Original Broadcast Records Reference Recordings
INCREDIBLY SCARCE! The New York PUblic LIbrary aRCHIVES & mANUSCRIPTS HAS A COLLECTION OF ORIGINAL bELL TELEPHONE hOUR BROADCAST.  thiS DATE IS MISSING FROM THEIR COLLECTION.  tHIS IS THE ONLY KNOWN COPY IN EXISTENCE. 

According to a Telephone Hour log this show featured the opera singer Ferrucio Tagliavini

Program Includes:

TRAD: Little brown jug
FLOTOW: M'appari "Martha"
DELIBES: Valse lente "Sylvia"
GIORDANO: Amor ti vieta "Fedora"
PAISELLO: Chi vuoi innamorarsi
ROSSINI: Tarantella
CANNIO: O surdato 'nnamurato

Information about Reference or Master Recordings

"Reference Recording" was a term used by NBC, but would generically apply to instantaneous master lacquer discs or master tapes of shows made directly at a network facility, recording studio, or radio station.  The discs were created by the network or station as a record of the show and are usually of very high quality, with some approaching high fidelity range.  Some were produced as a record of a broadcast for legal purposes; others may have been made as a master to press vinyl discs for syndication or for direct playback on the air for a program that was "transcribed".

Ferruccio Tagliavini

Ferruccio Tagliavini (pronounced [fer?rutt?o ta??a?vi?ni]; 14 August 1913 – 28 January 1995) was an Italian operatic tenor mainly active in the 1940s and 1950s. Tagliavini was hailed as the heir apparent to Tito Schipa and Beniamino Gigli in the lyric-opera repertory due to the exceptional beauty of his voice, but he did not sustain his great early promise across the full span of his career.

Contents

• 1Career
• 2Selected studio recordings
• 3Filmography
• 4Sources
• 5External links
• 6Footnotes

Career[edit]

Tagliavini was born in Cavazzoli, Reggio Emilia and studied in Parma with Italo Brancucci and in Florence and with Amedeo Bassi, a well-known dramatic verismo and Wagnerian Italian tenor of the pre-World War I era whose voice (as recorded) could not be more unlike Tagliavini's (see M.Scott, The Record of Singing, 1978). It was also in Florence that he made his professional debut in 1938 as Rodolfo in La bohème.

He swiftly gained recognition as one of the leading tenori di grazia of his time in operas such as The Barber of Seville, L'elisir d'amore, Don Pasquale, La sonnambula, Lucia di Lammermoor, Rigoletto, La traviata, Manon, Werther, L'amico Fritz and L'arlesiana.

Debuts at many of the world's major opera houses ensued. They included: La Scala, Milan, in 1942; the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, in 1946; the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, in 1947 (as Rodolfo in La bohème); the San Francisco Opera in 1948; the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, in 1950; and, finally, the Paris Opéra in 1951.

During the 1950s, Tagliavini took on heavier roles such as Riccardo in Un ballo in maschera, Cavaradossi in Tosca and Faust in Mefistofele; but the quality of his voice suffered as a consequence.

Tagliavini retired from the stage in 1965. He continued, however, to give recitals until the mid-1970s. He left behind an impressive discography. The finest of his recordings are those that he made of operatic arias during his heyday in the 1940s. In them, one can fully appreciate his remarkable skill at soft, or mezza voce, singing. He also made a few opera films, notably Il barbiere di Siviglia in 1946 with Tito Gobbi and Italo Tajo.

Tagliavini married the soprano Pia Tassinari in 1941. He made several recordings with her and they appeared together often on stage. There is a recording available of them singing Massenet's opera Werther.

He died in Reggio Emilia in 1995, aged 81.

Selected studio recordings[edit]

[1]

• 1939 - Mozart - Requiem, KV 626 - Ferruccio Tagliavini, Pia Tassinari, Ebe Stignani - Coro e Orchestra della Rai Torino, Victor de Sabata
• 1941 - Mascagni - L'amico Fritz - Ferruccio Tagliavini, Pia Tassinari, Saturno Meletti - Coro e Orchestra della Rai Torino, Pietro Mascagni
• 1952 - Bellini - La sonnambula - Lina Pagliughi, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Cesare Siepi - Coro Cetra, Orchestra della Rai Torino, Franco Capuana
• 1952 - Puccini - La bohème - Rosanna Carteri, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Elvina Ramella, Giuseppe Taddei, Cesare Siepi, Pier Luigi Latinucci - Coro e Orchestra della Rai Torino, Gabriele Santini
• 1954 - Puccini - Madama Butterfly - Clara Petrella, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Mafalda Masini, Giuseppe Taddei - Coro Cetra, Orchestra della Rai Torino, Angelo Questa
• 1954 - Verdi - Rigoletto - Giuseppe Taddei, Lina Pagliughi, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Giulio Neri - Coro e Orchestra della Rai Torino, Angelo Questa
• 1954 - Verdi - Un ballo in maschera - Mary Curtis Verna, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Giuseppe Valdengo, Pia Tassinari, Maria Erato - Coro e Orchestra della Rai Torino, Angelo Questa
• 1954 - Massenet - Werther - Ferruccio Tagliavini, Pia Tassinari, Vittoria Neviani, Marcello Cortis - Coro e Orchestra della Rai Torino, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli
• 1955 - Cilea - L'Arlesiana - Pia Tassinari, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Paolo Silveri, Gianna Galli - Coro e Orchestra della Rai Torino, Arturo Basile
• 1955 - Von Flotow - Martha - Elena Rizzieri, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Pia Tassinari, Carlo Tagliabue - Coro e Orchestra della Rai Torino, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli (sung in Italian)
• 1956 - Boito - Mefistofele - Giulio Neri, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Marcella Pobbé - Coro Teatro Regio Torino, Orchestra della Rai Torino, Angelo Questa
• 1956 - Puccini - Tosca - Gigliola Frazzoni, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Giangiacomo Guelfi - Coro e Orchestra della Rai Torino, Arturo Basile
• 1959 - Donizetti - Lucia di Lammermoor - Maria Callas, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Piero Cappuccilli - Philharmonia Chorus & Orchestra, Tullio Serafin

The Bell Telephone Hour

The Bell Telephone Hour (also known as The Telephone Hour) is a long-run concert series which began April 29, 1940, on NBC Radio and was heard on NBC until June 30, 1958. Sponsored by Bell Telephone as the name implies, it showcased the best in classical and Broadway music, reaching eight to nine million listeners each week. It continued on television from 1959 to 1968. Throughout the program's run on both radio and television, the studio orchestra on the program was conducted by Donald Voorhees.

Contents

• 1Synopsis
• 2Television
• 3Re-issues on DVD
• 4Awards
• 5Rehearsal: The Telephone Hour
• 6Listen to
• 7Watch
• 8References
• 9External links

Synopsis[edit]

After early shows featuring James Melton and Francia White as soloists, producer Wallace Magill restructured the format on April 27, 1942, into the "Great Artists Series" of concert and opera performers, beginning with Jascha Heifetz. The list of talents heard over the years included Marian Anderson, Bing Crosby, Margaret Daum, Nelson Eddy, Benny Goodman, José Iturbi, Fritz Kreisler, Oscar Levant, Ezio Pinza, Lily Pons, Gladys Swarthout, and Helen Traubel.

The series returned to radio in 1968-69 as Bell Telephone Hour Encores (Encores from the Bell Telephone Hour) featuring highlights and interviews from the original series.

The Bell Telephone Hour Orchestra included the clarinetist and saxophonist Joe Allard, who is well known in sax history as a saxophone teacher at the Juilliard School and the New England Conservatory of Music. His list of students include Stan Getz, Eric Dolphy, Dave Liebman, Ricky Ford, Bob Hanlon, Dave Tofani, Mike Brecker, Roger Rosenberg, John Coltrane and Steve Grossman.

Warner Anderson was the program's announcer, and Floyd Mack was the narrator.[1]

Television[edit]

The TV show, seen on NBC from January 12, 1959, to the summer of 1968, was one of the first TV series to be telecast exclusively in color, using the color TV system perfected by RCA in 1954. It aired every week on Friday evenings at 10:00 PM, then was switched to Tuesday evenings at 10:00 P.M. in 1963. It was noted for its Christmas specials, frequently featuring opera stars as well as stars of musical theater and ballet. In the fall of 1965, the show was switched to an earlier time slot of Sundays at 6:30pm.

Beginning in 1965, the program sometimes had to share its time slot with an NBC news series called Actuality Specials on NBC, and was telecast every other week. In the fall of 1963, the program alternated with The Andy Williams Show.[1]

During its last season, 1967-1968, the program was switched back to its old Friday night time slot and the format changed from a videotaped and mostly musical presentation to filmed documentaries about classical musicians made on location.

One of the most notable of the Bell Telephone Hour documentary programs combined a tour of the Museo del Prado in Madrid, with performances by such noted Spanish musicians as Andrés Segovia, Alicia de Larrocha, and Victoria de los Ángeles. Another was a profile of Cleveland Orchestra conductor George Szell. This one was not a biography of Szell, but a documentary showing how he worked with the orchestra.

One of the last, and most notable episodes done in the videotape format, was "First Ladies of Opera", featuring Joan Sutherland, Leontyne Price, Renata Tebaldi and Birgit Nilsson, all on one program. In 1976, footage from the TV series was edited into a 90-minute retrospective TV special entitled The Bell Telephone Jubilee, aka Jubilee, hosted by Bing Crosby and Liza Minnelli.

NBC Staff announcer Mel Brandt was the series announcer. ABC staff announcer Scott Vincent hosted the 1962 season finale, "Till Autumn."[2]

Re-issues on DVD[edit]

Beginning in 2001, DVDs of performances from the television series have been released by Video Artists International. To date, VAI has issued more than two dozen DVD compilations, as well as a number of complete telecasts, most notably the episode of April 29, 1960, which presented a lavishly staged production of The Mikado starring Groucho Marx. The stunning array of performers who appeared on the Bell Telephone Hour television program includes:

• Singers: Barbara Cook, Franco Corelli, Régine Crespin, Victoria De Los Angeles, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Eileen Farrell, Nicolai Gedda, Dolores Gray, Mahalia Jackson, Carol Lawrence, George London, Thomas Hayward, Gordon MacRae, Ethel Merman, Robert Merrill, Anna Moffo, Birgit Nilsson, Roberta Peters, Leontyne Price, John Raitt, Dinah Shore, Risë Stevens, Joan Sutherland, Renata Tebaldi, Richard Tucker, Leslie Uggams, Jon Vickers, Mildred Miller and Gretchen Wyler.

• Pianists: Claudio Arrau, Jorge Bolet, Robert Casadesus, Alicia de Larrocha, Van Cliburn, Philippe Entremont, Lorin Hollander, Byron Janis, Grant Johannesen, and José Iturbi.

• Violinists: Mischa Elman, Zino Francescatti, Yehudi Menuhin, Erica Morini, David Oistrakh, Michael Rabin, Ruggiero Ricci, and Isaac Stern. (Also, the famed cellist Gregor Piatigorsky and master of the guitar Andrés Segovia.)

• Dancers: Alicia Alonso, Erik Bruhn, Jacques d'Amboise, Carla Fracci, Rudolf Nureyev, Matt Mattox, Edward Villella, Violette Verdy, and Maria Tallchief.

Awards[edit]

The series won two Emmys and was nominated for seven others.

Rehearsal: The Telephone Hour[edit]

In 1947, a 27-minute black-and-white short subject entitled Rehearsal: The Telephone Hour, was released to theaters. Originating in NBC's Studio 6B at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the film featured, in addition to Voorhees and the orchestra, operatic bass Ezio Pinza and opera mezzo-soprano Blanche Thebom singing arias. It simulated a rehearsal of the popular program, complete with a commercial announcement, and then, near the end, segued to what was presumably the actual radio broadcast.