Between 1956 and 1981, Edward J. Smith issued three series of private long-playing recordings devoted almost entirely to historical operatic performance. Smith's first series, The Golden Age of Opera, appeared between 1956 and 1971, and its contents are catalogued here for the first time. Notorious for their lack of accurate documentation, the LPs have remained a source of great frustration to collectors and historians. This volume presents an exhaustive accounting of the thousands of individual recordings contained on the 479 Golden Age of Opera LPs, documented from the most reliable primary and secondary sources, studio and opera house archives, and personal correspondence.
About the Author: WILLIAM SHAMAN is on the library faculty of Bemidji State University, Minnesota. He is the author of several journal and encyclopedia articles, numerous short articles and reviews, and co-author, with Susan Nelson, of a forthcoming discography of Marcel Moyse. His first book, Giuseppe De Luca: A Discography
WILLIAM J. COLLINS, an Assistant Professor of English at Kutztown University, teaches American Literature and Science Fiction courses. He has been an opera critic for Pacifica Radio and music critic for the Davis Enterprise in Northern California. He has published several discographies of opera singers, critical essays on many aspects of the opera, as well as on Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, and Phillip K. Dick. He is the co-author, with Bruce Levene, of the first biography of the nineteenth-century outlaw, Black Bart, entitled Black Bart: The True Story of the West's Most Famous Stagecoach Robber
CALVIN M. GOODWIN, a priest of the Society of Jesus, teaches classics in a Jesuit secondary school in Portland, Maine. He writes the annotations for the International Record Collectors' Club reissues of historical vocal recordings.
