"Ombra mai fu" is the opening aria from the 1738 opera Serse by George Frideric Handel. It has often been arranged for other voice types and instruments, including solo organ, solo piano, violin and piano, and string ensembles, often under the title "Largo from Xerxes", although the original tempo is marked larghetto. For most of the piece the vocalist is in piano (soft) and only forte (loud) one time close to the end of the piece. Even though many composers write on the music sheet how the musical performance should be interpreted, many vocalist sometimes add their own interpretation to the piece to make it their own. Vocalists cannot change the lyrics or notes, they can only alter the dynamics and the length and musical riffs of each note.
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Recorded George Feiderich’s “Ombra mai fu” in 1920 at the Victor studios in Camden, New Jersey, in 1920. His performance of the piece was mezzoforte throughout most the piece with many crescendos to a stable forte and decrescendos back to mezzoforte. His vocal performance was strong, loud, and not very smooth. Since this was recorded in 1920. This piece was recorded on the gramophone, an acoustic process involving the use of a large recording horn that would capture the vibrations of the sound and record them as patterns on a wax disc. The overall sound of the recording was had poor efficiency and poor tonal quality. With this technology the recording engineer only had to worry about the placement of the singer relative to the horn. From the sound of the vocalists, he must have had him placed as close as possible to the recording horn to be heard because to get the best capture of the performance, the singer had to have as less distance as possible from the horn. Which is most likely why the vocalists sounded so loud, in addition to him being an opera singer who was during this time use to projecting his voice loudly so that the entire audience can hear the performance. This musical interpretation differs from Marilyn Horne version recorded in
Recorded George Feiderich’s “Ombra mai fu” in 1920 at the Victor studios in Camden, New Jersey, in 1920. His performance of the piece was mezzoforte throughout most the piece with many crescendos to a stable forte and decrescendos back to mezzoforte. His vocal performance was strong, loud, and not very smooth. Since this was recorded in 1920. This piece was recorded on the gramophone, an acoustic process involving the use of a large recording horn that would capture the vibrations of the sound and record them as patterns on a wax disc. The overall sound of the recording was had poor efficiency and poor tonal quality. With this technology the recording engineer only had to worry about the placement of the singer relative to the horn. From the sound of the vocalists, he must have had him placed as close as possible to the recording horn to be heard because to get the best capture of the performance, the singer had to have as less distance as possible from the horn. Which is most likely why the vocalists sounded so loud, in addition to him being an opera singer who was during this time use to projecting his voice loudly so that the entire audience can hear the performance. This musical interpretation differs from Marilyn Horne version recorded in