Pedro Navia interpreta "E lucevan le stelle" de la ópera "Tosca" (1912)

E lucevan le stelle (G. Puccini)

A pupil of Benedetti in Santiago, Navia made his debut in 1908 as Rodolfo in La Bohème at the Municipal in Santiago. For the next several seasons he sang regularly at the Marconi in Buenos Aires, in principal tenor roles in a variety of operas including Iris, Rigoletto, Tosca, Manon Lescaut, Fedora, Faust, and La Traviata. His Italian debut was in Bari, 1912, as Gounod's Faust. The next year he appeared at La Scala as Lohengrin, Wolf- Ferrari's Le Donne Curiose, and Turiddu. In subsequent seasons he sang at Torino, Verona, Palermo, Parma, and in 1916 at the Colón (Buenos Aires) in Boris Godounov and with Ruffo in Rigoletto. It was in this latter opera that he was first heard at the Costanzi (Rome). The remainder of his career included performances in Spain and throughout South and Central America. One source indicates that around 1950 he opened a singing school in Bogotá (Colombia) and another that he was working there as a bank clerk, although his latter years . He was honored recently (1997) as one of a group of Chilean singers to be commemorated via a postage stamp issue. Until the discovery of this Edison trial, it was thought that he never recorded.

What is an edison trial?

In 1912, Thomas A. Edison conducted a European talent search designed to recruit vocal artists for his record company. Over three hundred cylinders of some of Europe's greatest singers were recorded and sent back to the United Sates for Edison's personal review. Before these canisters were opened last year, Thomas Edison was the last person to hear these 1912-1913 cylinders. They represent not only some of the only recorded examples of certain European singers active during this period, but are arguably the most vivid of any acoustic recordings.