Re: [ARSCLIST] Met Opera Record Club

[Steven Smolian <smolians@xxxxxxxxx>]

This Otello did come on Columbia ML.  Had a light blue and white cover.  I 
don't recall the number.

I think I have their monthly offering leaflets in my files if anyone needs 
them.

Steve Smolian


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Lennick" <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, April 06, 2007 11:15 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Met Opera Record Club


> I neglected to identify David Hamilton as the author of the note telling us 
> that the Met has little claim to those BOMC recordings. Meanwhile, my 
> original questions (apart from RCA issuing a couple of those sets 
> commercially) linger. Were these albums ever sold in stores or issued 
> overseas? There's an "Otello" highlights album with Steber, Vinay and Cleva 
> conducting, on Philips ABL 3005. I have no equivalent Columbia version 
> turning up in Schwann..I wonder if this might have been from the Met 
> series.
>
> dl
>
> > Mike Richter wrote:
> > > David Lennick wrote:
> > > > What can anyone tell me about the albums produced in the 50s by Book Of 
> > > > The Month as "Metropolitan Opera Record Club"? Were they ever sold in 
> > > > stores, or available only by mail order? Were they issued in the UK or 
> > > > Europe? Were any of them derived from commercial recordings? Are the 
> > > > rights still held by the Met or Book Of The Month?
> > >
> > > They were not derived from commercial release but some were released 
> > > commercially by RCA. My understanding is that rights are retained by the 
> > > Met, which has issued a sort of anthology. I was told that they no 
> > > longer had masters or even good copies of the audio in some cases, but 
> > > understand that the digitization - as far as it goes - is quite good.
> > >
> > >   http://www.metoperafamily.org/shop/display.aspx?ID=10062&CatID=20
> > >
> > > Mike
> >
> > Here's some of a discussion from December 2005 on this list:
> >
> > Contrary to popular belief, the Met does not own the Metropoliitan Opera 
> > Record Club recordings, nor did they ever hold the masters. The entire 
> > project was carried out under the auspices of the Book of the Month Club, 
> > working with Columbia and RCA (the matrix numbers reveal which company 
> > did the engineering and pressing). The "Metropolitan Opera Record Club" 
> > was a b brand name for BOMC. The Met merely lent its name (for a 
> > consideration) and BOMC was supposed to use Met performers (they began 
> > near the bottom of the barrel, then discovered that names DID make the 
> > recordings sell better. RCA later arranged with the BOMC to issue the 
> > Périchole and the abridged Boris sung in English (in Karel Rathaus's 
> > "realization" of Mussorgsky's orchestration), which they had recorded, on 
> > RCA retail discs (IIRC, Bing complained in his memoirs that the Met got 
> > none of the money from that.) Last I heard, nobody seems to know where 
> > the masters are. And, AFAIK, all Met Opera Guild CD tracks drawn from 
> > that series have been dubbed from LPs.
> >
> > David
> >
> > At 06:30 PM 12/9/2005, you wrote:
> >
> >     Mike Richter wrote:
> >
> >     > All the usual market forces would ensure that prices were 
> > remarkably low
> >     > if not for the absurd extension of copyright to ensure that the
> >     > corporations holding rights to decades-old material maintained 
> > their
> >     > monopoly. Since they are remiss in reissues of any but the most 
> > popular
> >     > material and unwilling to allow others to do so (with exceptions 
> > such as
> >     > Testament), they are destroying the heritage through malign 
> > neglect.
> >     >
> >     > Let me cite one instance. In the 1950s, the Metropolitan Opera 
> > Record
> >     > Club issued a series of recordings using featured singers and 
> > conductors
> >     > who are otherwise almost undocumented. The Met holds the copyright 
> > and
> >     > zealously defends it, though I am told on good authority that they 
> > not
> >     > only have lost the masters but no longer even have good copies of 
> > many
> >     > of the issued LPs. So Kirsten's Tosca, Tucker's Lenski and 
> > Mitropoulos's
> >     > (abridged) Walkuere are little more than rumors in terms of legal 
> > issues.
> >     >
> >     > Mike
> >
> >
> >     And those discs are coming close to the 50-year mark, if we can just 
> > hold back
> >     the copyright extensions for a couple of years......Canada isn't 
> > going to change
> >     for quite a while yet, incidentally, since there'd barely been 
> > anything proposed
> >     and our Parliament is now in election mode till the end of January.
> >
> >     And I have near mint copies of many of those Met sets.
> >
> >     dl
>
>
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