I am not too sure why I bought this CD - possibly because I saw it in a shop and it wasn't expensive. My father was a Gigli fan - paid to see him at the Free Trade Hall, then, the next day, having heard on the grapevine, heard him again, for free, at Mass in the Hidden Gem
A great singer, of course; conventional wisdom states so. These tracks were all recorded in the 1930s or 1940s, so, of course, the quality suffers through primitive recording. But despite all that I don't especially care for the voice.
There isn't actually a great deal about him on the internet Grand-Tenori, Opera Italiana are worth a look.
It's strange that I have this in my collection but nothing by Jussi Björling, Richard Tauber or Fritz Wunderlich, something that needs to be remedied...
I am not getting a great deal of pleasure from listening to this CD. The first disc is filled with arias that feature in the repertoire of any half-decent "Italian" tenor, much of them lovely tunes. But I am enjoying them, despie the voice, rather than because. Far too much sobbing - sobbing, along with scooping and over-emphasising are trademarks of Gigli. But there's also something about the actual voice I don't like. Basically, it's a style of singing that has gone out of fashion, a sort of taking the higher notes in a sort of falsetto. I can't adequately describe it. But I don't like it.
There isn't a single track that I don't have a better version by another singer in my collection*
* and to pre-empt comments, not exclusively one other singer!
