Georges Bizet
The Pearl Fishers Act I
"Je Crois Entendre Encore"

Enrico Caruso, tenor

Recorded on December 7, 1916
in Camden, N.J.

It isn't often that a four-minute piece can occupy an entire week in the studio, but the engineering of a century ago is a lost art, and recovering those concepts can be time consuming if we wish to achieve accuracy.

Caruso described his sessions as : "Being placed a few feet in front of a baffle with a single opening for the horn, the orchestra would set up behind me." The restoration bears out Caruso's description: he was placed a few feet in front of the baffle and a couple degrees to the left of center, the orchestra was set up behind him. The system used a single-valve chamber as he described it.

The restoration also reveals the origin of all the banging noises; the Camden Studio was in an industrial area, and there was some kind of heavy project going on when this recording was made. Outside noise was a growing problem for the recording industry. They would eventually have to invest millions on new studio spaces to address it by the 1930s.

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