In 2018 the British Library ran their Windrush Exhibition, Songs from a Strange Land, which featured multiple recordings from the sound archive. To coincide with this the Learning Team designed a digital education programme entitled ‘Walk in their footsteps: Windrush Voices,’ which was later developed into an on-site workshop for Key Stage 4 and 5 students (ages 14 – 18). The workshop critically engaged learners with the British Library’s archival collections and investigated the experiences of Caribbean immigrants coming to England in the 1950s and 1960s through their own personal testimonies. Many of the oral history clips used in these sessions can make for difficult and upsetting listening, as individuals including Vanley Burke and Donald Hinds reflect on their experiences, not least the racism they encountered, following their arrival to the U.K.

Since launching this programme the Learning Team have received many requests for similar resources for Key Stage 2 learners (ages 7 – 11). Schools teaching Windrush as part of their local history study had struggled to find authentic and meaningful visits or materials, beyond key texts such as Benjamin Zephaniah’s Windrush Child and Floella Benjamin’s Coming to England. They also felt that upper Key Stage Two learners were ready for more challenging material, including examining racism and the legacies of empire. The Learning Team worked closely with a cohort of teachers on ways to incorporate our oral history clips in meaningful but accessible ways for younger users.

The interior of the Baggage Hall at Tilbury Passenger Landing Stage,  Essex. Image from Alamy.

The central clip selected was of poet and activist Linton Kwesi Johnson reflecting on his experience of arriving in Tilbury Docks from Jamaica in November 1963 as an 11-year-old boy. To promote active listening, we followed a metacognitive approach, helping learners to think explicitly about the processes of learning.  We did this by following a clear step-by-step framework of questions and prompts to create a more authentic encounter between listener and testimony, described as ‘interactive listening,’ which seeks to create a different way of thinking, centring connection over comprehension. 

Before listening to the clip, learners were given a brief amount of contextual information, then asked to consider the following: 

1. Given what you already know, what are you expecting to hear in the interview?

2. What questions might the interviewer ask, and how might the interviewee respond?

While using this method, learners are encouraged to listen carefully not just for content but for the emotion in the speaker’s voice, and how their ideas might be communicated. Learners are told there are no right or wrong answers; rather, they are encouraged to make a connection between their own contextual knowledge and what they might expect to hear. They’re also encouraged to draw on their own experiences: in this example, the learners are all close to Linton’s age when he arrived in the UK, which presents an opportunity for a genuine empathetic connection between listener and interviewee. Feedback from one of the pilot sessions reflected this: 

Children were engaged with the recordings because they had prior knowledge and were allowed to think for themselves. Nothing was a bad idea or spoon-fed to them

The clip is played twice, and learners are asked to consider the following questions:

3. What did you find out, and was it line with what you were expecting?

4. Any surprises and/or omissions?

5. What follow-up questions would you like to have asked? 

In terms of expectations, learners sometimes expect Linton to talk directly about racism, thinking that this will be a central feature of his experiences. This is an opportunity to point out that the focus of the clip is his initial arrival, rather than areas of life where he might be more exposed to racism, such as at school or work. This can lead onto a discussion about Linton seeing the world through a child’s lens and the extent to which he might have limited understanding of the wider context, compared to his mother’s greater awareness and ability to make sense of her surroundings and experiences. It also provides a good opportunity to point out that this clip is one fragment of a much longer life story and that in other extracts Linton does discuss the racism and discrimination he faces. 

Linton Kwesi Johnson in concert in Brussels October 28, 2017. Image by Peter Verwimp.

In response to the fourth question, learners are often surprised by Linton’s response to the interviewer’s question about how long it had been since he’d last since his mother: 

It seemed like a long time, but I don’t think it was more than two years. But it seemed like a very long time.

We discuss ideas of separation and how that might have felt, why Linton seemingly plays down the length of time he was apart from his mother, as well as how separation of families is a central theme in migration stories. This links to the final question and the kind of questions that learners generate. The following emerged as questions learners would have liked to have asked Linton:

- ‘What was it like seeing your mother again?’

- ‘Who looked after you when your Mum was in England?’

- ‘Where was your Dad?’, and 

- ‘Did you wish you could go back to Jamaica?’ 

These questions all reflect empathy and active engagement with the listening exercise. Regardless of whether they can get answers to their questions, learners are demonstrating agency through their involvement in the process, rather than being passive recipients of information. This demonstrates how using oral history in the classroom doesn’t necessarily need to equate with learners carrying out their own interviews; rather, the exercise can form part of a richer learning experience in and of itself. This has been reflected in the feedback:

The children loved hearing real voices and spoke about how it helped them understand history and bring it to life more – sometimes it doesn’t feel real!

In March 2024, the first Windrush Primary workshop ran at the British Library. This coincided with new documents becoming available in the Treasures gallery, including a 1964 letter from James Berry’s archive, a 1961 pamphlet published by the BBC Caribbean Service from Andrew Salkey’s archive, and a photo story from the first edition of Flamingo magazine, also from 1961. These artefacts provide a fantastic opportunity for learners to work like historians, handling archival material and using it to challenge or corroborate their evidence. This has been particularly effective in relation to Linton's clip and the letter from James Berry’s son Roger, both demonstrating how stories of migration are often underpinned with separation from loved ones, and the myriad challenges this brings.

It has been wonderful to bring clips from the sound archive to a younger audience and see first-hand how learners can engage with oral history in a meaningful way. As for next steps, the primary workshop is already adapting to meet the demands of secondary teachers keen to bring their Key Stage 3 (ages 11 – 14) learners to the Library, which will bring opportunities to source different clips that will speak to, and reflect, the experiences of this age group. We are also keen to develop links with teachers and help support the use of oral history and follow-up activities in their own classrooms, including creating short documentaries and podcasts based on their experiences with the British Library’s sound archive.

Thank you to the schools involved in the pilot: Jodi-Ann Forbes and her learners at Woodpecker Hall Academy, Enfield; Sam Nelson and her learners at Christchurch Primary School, Essex; Chloe Sutherland and her learners at St Peter and St Paul Church Primary, Surrey; Louise Hall and Louise Archer and their learners at Holy Trinity and St Silas Primary, Camden. Additional thanks to Mary Stewart (Lead Curator of Oral History) and the Learning Team at the BL.

Blog by Debbie Bogard, Learning Facilitator in the British Library's Learning team.

 

Introduction

Part 3 of a guest blog by Andrew O. Krastins. 

Part 1 can be found here.  Part 2 can be found here.

In the last two parts of this blog, the reader learned how the Mystery Cylinders traveled from their unknown point of origin to the desk of a London music publishing executive who died in 1929, then, around 1965, into a refuse bin from which they were rescued in the nick of time, then to the home of the employee who rescued them, and, finally, to the British Library. Readers learned why the British Library’s provisional attribution of the cylinders to August Wilhelmj is no longer plausible.  The author urged, but has yet to demonstrate, that Sivori recorded at least some of the cylinders at the end of his life, perhaps days before his death.  In part 2, readers met Sivori himself and, all too briefly, followed the career of this great Romantic virtuoso, who, it turns out, was a supremely well-rounded musician, lover of chamber music and devotee of Beethoven, utterly devoted to the violin, even in his 70s, playing his scales and improvising every day in his modest Paris hotel room or equally modest Genoa apartment, and frequently performing with friends in Paris and Genoa.  Now we come to the most convoluted part of our adventure. In the early 1890s, almost all of the very few phonographs then in Europe were tightly controlled by the London-based Edison United Phonograph Company, overseen by Edison’s wayward agent, Colonel George Gouraud.  There is no evidence that Sivori visited England during the early 1890s. Because phonographs were extremely rare in Continental Europe, placing the Phonograph and Sivori in the same place at the same time is no simple venture. Sivori died on February 19, 1894. From September 1893 up to his death, his health fluctuated widely.  Unless Sivori had access to a phonograph while he was still capable of performing, he could not possibly have recorded the Mystery Cylinders.  The reader is in for a rather strenuous uphill hike over some slippery ground through tangles of arcane minutiae. 

A view from the Cemetery    

High in the hills above the tangled passageways of Genoa’s Old Town sits the Staglieno Monumental Cemetery, the final resting place of Genoa’s elite, its heroes, intellectuals and artists, and those merchants and bankers wealthy enough to adorn their tombs with monuments crafted by Genoa’s finest sculptors.  At the cemetery’s center is its 'Pantheon' built in the style of a classical Greek temple and reserved for the remains of Genoa’s most illustrious personages.  Beyond the Pantheon, winding paths of broken stone steps, eaten away by lichen, lead upward, past monuments in varying states of decay, to a small, gated yard at the top of the cemetery, reserved for Genoese heroes of the Risorgimento who in 1860 fought beside Garibaldi in the 'Expedition of a Thousand' to unify Italy and free it of foreign occupiers. Here, many of the monuments are now toppled and broken, the gravestones themselves buried beneath thick masses of leaves and dirt, the buried heroes long forgotten.

Staglieno cemetery

In the early afternoon of February 20, 1894, crowds of mourners began to gather in front of 15 Via Giulia, where Sivori’s body lay in a closed coffin. An hour before the procession to the Pantheon of the Staglieno Cemetery was to begin, the street swelled with mourners, including the foremost families of Genoa and representatives of Genoa’s musical and civic institutions and admirers of all classes.

Pantheon at Staglieno cemetery

Sivori’s relatives hoisted the coffin onto the carriage, which proceeded to the Pantheon, where Sivori’s body was laid to rest.  Contemporary accounts portray a ceremony as solemn and elaborate as a state funeral.¹

Sivori’s grave

In the area reserved for Garibaldi’s ‘Thousand’ is the grave of Enrico Copello.  It is not easy to find, the stone monument long broken, and the gravestone itself buried beneath dirt and leaves. To locate Copello’s grave requires some guesswork, digging and sweeping away inches of debris covering the tombstone which lays flat on the ground.  Copello’s death seems to have attracted little attention.  A few American papers reported his death in early April 1920, perhaps because he was a longtime resident of New York.  But in Genoa, where he was born into a wealthy and prominent family in 1844, his death seems to have passed largely unnoticed.  The Dizionario del Risorgimento Nazionale, published in 1930, misstates the year of his birth and provides no year of death, suggesting he was still living. Even his tombstone misstates his year of death as 1925 rather than 1920.  No one has seen fit to correct it, if it has been noticed at all.

Copello’s grave

Descending from the Staglieno Cemetery back into Genoa proper, there are several places of note, not palaces or monuments to Columbus, but more obscure places which play a central role in our story.  The first is the Sala Sivori, a concert hall built in honor of Sivori in 1869 by Sivori’s friend and admirer Giuseppe Bossola, the piano and musical instrument merchant and music publisher.

Around the corner, at 14 Via Roma, was Bossola’s music store, a gathering place of Genoa’s musicians.  The young composer Niccolo Massa lived a few steps away; the pianist and conductor Leonardo Monleone less than 200 meters.  Reporters from the offices of Il Caffaro, edited by Sivori’s friend Ferdinando Resasco, could walk to the Sala Sivori in little over five minutes.  Behind the walls of Genoa’s narrow streets and in the hills to the east are the villas and mansions of Genoa’s social elite.

A bit south, and overlooking the harbor, was the mansion of Selene Gavino Hofer – a medieval church transformed into a magnificent castle by her fabulously wealthy cousin, Raffaele Rubattino, a shipping magnate. Upon Rubattino’s death in 1881, his entire fortune passed, via Selene, to her husband, Rodolfo Hofer, a prominent Swiss-Italian banker who had been Rubattino’s business partner.  Widowed by Rodolfo’s untimely death in 1886, the entire fortune passed to Selene, a prominent salonnière and amateur pianist at whose home Sivori often performed.  Their friendship dated back to at least the 1860s. Sivori’s performances at Selene’s grand residence were reported in the local press.

Two figures in the shadows

And now we venture into that dark and as yet uncharted historical murk promised in our first installment, that is, an investigation into early sound recording in France and Italy before the rise of European commercial recording in the late 1890s.  General histories of sound recording, biographies of Edison and Eiffel, and popular histories of ‘La Belle Epoque’ together tell a broad but incomplete story.  Readers of such works learn that the phonograph arrived in London in 1888 via Edison’s self-aggrandizing and voluble agent, Colonel George Gouraud, and that Gouraud was convinced that the best use of the device was to collect recordings of eminent worthies praising Edison and Gouraud, and to travel about Britain displaying the device to the paying public. 

A.M.Broadley Introduces Colonel Gouraud 1888

Edison, by contrast, initially believed that the highest use of the Phonograph was as a business machine for office dictation and court reporting. 

Readers of such literature will also learn that the phonograph was introduced to continental Europe at the Paris World’s Fair in 1889, where it created a sensation, but that there was no sound recording of note in Europe before the Pathé brothers founded the French recording industry in the late 1890s, or before similar enterprises arose in other European countries in the late 1890s and early 1900s.  The primary interest of scholars and collectors has been the history of the commercial recording industry as it played out in various countries. Private recordings predating the rise of the commercial phonograph industry are exceedingly rare, and as here, can be fiendishly difficulty to identify.  Also, their relation to the rise of the commercial recording industry is limited.  Hence their general neglect.

Obsessively attentive readers of these secondary sources might notice two names mentioned only in passing: Enrico Copello whose grave we visited five paragraphs back, and Emile Durer.  Durer, it seems, was a Parisian journalist who wrote a short biography of Edison in conjunction with the 1889 Paris World’s Fair.

The phonograph at Paris 1889 Exposition

According to such accounts, that is where his significance ends.  In reality, however, Durer was a well-connected young Hungarian Jewish former diplomat and an extremely enterprising international musical impresario who traveled in the highest social, cultural and musical echelons in the countries where he was active.  Durer was fluent in at least five languages, translating Italian librettos into French, authoring an 1895 novel in German about Parisian life, composing opera libretti in Italian and writing freely in English.  Durer arrived in America in 1888, not primarily as a journalist but as the agent of the Hungarian tenor Jules Perotti, who made his United States debut on November 28, 1888. 

Émile Dürer in 1892

 This was more than six months before the opening of the Paris World’s Fair on May 5, 1889.²

According to the Musical Courier’s January 9, 1889 profile, Durer was born in Budapest in 1859, and was already famous in Europe and South America as an impresario, journalist and publisher.  Durer also served as an Austrian and French diplomat, and upon urging of the French statesman Leon Gambetta, settled in Paris.  After Gambetta’s death in 1882, Durer became an impresario and opera director while continuing to write articles for various journals.  As agent, Durer made a concert tour of Europe with the French baritone Jean LaSalle.  In 1887, Durer commenced a ‘grand operatic tournée through South America’ culminating in the first South American performances of Wagner operas in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Montevideo.³ 

During Durer’s American tour as a musical impresario, he established his personal connection to Edison.  In a March 19, 1889 telegram which Durer sent to Edison from the steamer Allen, Durer wrote: ‘Many thanks for splendid reception. You shall be satisfied from me compliments.’⁴ He signed the telegram ‘Editor Emile Durer,’ presumably while en route back to Paris.

On June 12, 1889, five weeks after the Paris World’s Fair opened, Princess Mathilde Bonaparte hosted one of her salons.  The memoirist Edmond de Goncourt recalled: ‘This evening, at the princess’, one makes me say a sentence into a phonograph, and the sentence that I say, the magic instrument repeats it in my ear, the repetition in the ears of the princess, Lavoix etc.’  Edison’s chief recording expert, Theodore Wangemann, did not leave New York for Paris until June 15, 1889, so he could not have been present.  Edison did not arrive in Paris until August 12, 1889.  Because Princess Mathilde’s salon was frequented by the greatest creative minds of Paris, it is unfortunate that the online Edison papers now available contain no reference to Princess Mathilde or to the June 12, 1889 demonstration.  Although it is unclear who organized the demonstration for Princess Mathilde and her guests, the only person presently known with the social connections and skill to do so was the enterprising Durer, who relied on the phonograph to publicize his musical celebrities in the years after the 1889 World’s Fair, most notably for our purposes, in Italy in 1892.

Cavaliere Copello and the strange career of the Phonograph in Italy

Copello, if he is mentioned at all, appears as an emissary from King Umberto at an elegant gathering held in Edison’s honor, and conveys upon Edison an Italian royal title tantamount to a knighthood.  In those English-language histories where he does appear, he typically is portrayed as an overly animated, gesticulating comical Italian, gibbering at a bemused Edison to the amusement of the other guests – a caricature resembling ugly stock ethnic stereotypes straight from the Victorian music hall stage or xenophobic editorial cartoons.  But to understand the Mystery Cylinders, his story, convoluted as it is, must be told and understood.

Copello, at least according to his tombstone, was born on 11 January 1844.  Born to a wealthy Genoese family, Copello received an elite education in Switzerland.  His father was an entrepreneur, dealing in military supplies and other government goods with offices in several Italian cities.  Copello’s father sent Copello, at age 15, to Milan to assist in the firm’s business.  There, Copello volunteered for Garibaldi’s army.  Copello’s father possessed a fortune of between five and six million lire and appears to have helped fund Garibaldi’s campaigns at Copello’s request.  According to the Dizionario del Risorgimento Nazionale, from which these facts are drawn, from 1866 through 1868, Copello traveled in Africa, Asia and the United States, where he settled in New York City, importing and brokering citrus fruits, marble and other Italian products.                                                                                               

By 1875, Copello had formed a connection with the Society of the Army of the Cumberland, a benevolent society for veterans of one of the principal Union armies in the American Civil War.  On August 13, 1875, Copello wrote a letter declining an invitation to the Society’s Ninth Annual Reunion in Utica, New York.⁵  Copello’s letter shows his full command of English, that Copello was already known among high ranking American military officials as a captain on Garibaldi’s staff, and that he was already so involved in business in New York City that he had to decline an invitation to a prestigious event.  In 1876, Copello married an American, Alice Copello, who became a teacher of foreign languages.⁶  According to the 1900 United States Census for New York, by 1888, the Copellos were raising four children.  By no later than 1880 Copello also maintained a residence in Florence, Italy, apparently the Italian base for his New York import business.⁷

By no later than the Spring of 1889, Copello became personally acquainted with Edison.  The two entered into some sort of arrangement through which Copello understood he had purchased the rights to market the phonograph in Italy.  Copello sailed with his family for Europe with ambitious plans which he quickly put into action.  Prior to arriving in Italy, Copello stopped in London and received two phonographs from Gouraud.⁸ ‘Two phono-graphs are in Italy loaned to a friend of Colonel's, a Mr. Copello to the encouragement of raising a company, but used up to date principally for exhibitional purposes to the public,’ reported Edison’s chief technical expert on the phonograph, Hugh de Coursey Hamilton.  Prior to June 27, 1889, Copello and Gouraud arranged for an Italian Charge´ d’Affaires to record a message to Italian Prime Minister Francesco Crispi.  The Bristol Mercury reported on 6 July 1889:

The first practical use of the phonograph in diplomatic correspondence occurred on Friday, and to Italy’s representative at the court of St. James belongs the honor of this innovation.  Commendatore Catalani, Chargé d’Affaires, preceded his private communication, which was addressed to Signor Crispi in the following way:– ‘Through the kind thoughtfulness of Col. Gouraud, Edison’s colleague, and the patriotic idea of Cavalier Copello, it was decided that the first phonogram sent from England to Italy today (June 27^th,1889) should transmit the voice of the Chargé d’Affaires of Italy in London, addressed to his Excellence the Honourable Crispi, President of the Council (Premiere) and Minister of Foreign Affairs.  Thanks to the genius of Edison, as in fairy tales, my voice as my wish will bear wings. From the shores of the Thames . . . it will cross the sea, voyage through France, pierce the Alps, run through Piedmont, Liguria and Tuscany, until it is heard on the shores of the Tiber. . . . Since the sound of the human voice, in itself a light and passing thing, may be indefinitely treasured, right are those who pronounce the human soul immortal, for it is necessary to be immortal to have the power of rendering imperishable such a quickly fleeting thing.

Cavalier Copello (uno dei mille), one of ‘Garibaldi’s famous thousand,’ is the bearer of these unique dispatches.’

Copello told his Italian audiences that the beginning of Copello’s actual work on behalf of the phonograph in Italy began on July 4, 1889, which he noted was American Independence Day.  Thus it appears that Copello arrived in London around July 4, 1889 to pick up the two phonographs and the diplomatic phonogram from Catalani to Crispi.  This also means he was already working directly with Gouraud.

In mid-July 1889, Copello went to Rome and demonstrated the phonograph before the Italian Chamber of Deputies.  On July 15, 1889, Copello demonstrated the phonograph to King Umberto.  The King recorded a congratulatory message to Edison for Copello to present to the inventor in Paris.  King Umberto also conveyed upon Edison the title of grande ufficiale della Corona d'Italia, or Grand Officer of the Crown of Italy, a signal honor in the newly unified Italian nation.  On July 29, 1889, Charles H. Wood, the United States Vice Consul General to Rome, reported to the State Department that 'Signor Enrico Copello, who formerly resided many years in the United States, has purchased the rights to sell the Edison phonograph in Italy.'

According to news reports: ‘As a preliminary step to this enterprise, the Consul reports that Signor Copello visited Rome, bringing with him the first phonograph ever seen in the kingdom.  It was exhibited before representatives of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, leading scientists and King Umberto. The King dictated a congratulatory message to the phonograph to the inventor and requested Signor Copello to carry to Queen Margaret at Venice a phonograph message.  The invention awakened great interest throughout the country, the Vice Consul says, and the columns of the press are filled with handsome tributes to Mr. Edison and to the inventive genius of the American people generally.’⁹ This article, or versions of it, appeared in newspapers throughout the United States.

Copello established his phonograph headquarters in Florence where he already had a business presence, hired employees and embarked on a series of exhibitions throughout Italy. Also headquartered in Florence was Edison’s longtime friend, the fabulously wealthy Egisto P. Fabbri, an Italian shipping magnate and investment banker who made his fortune in the United States, was a business partner of the Gilded Age financier J. P. Morgan and was instrumental in expanding Edison’s electrical lighting business into Italy and elsewhere in Europe.¹⁰ The Fabbris were devoted to music.  Egisto was a talented cellist who played at a professional level.¹¹ His nephew, whom he adopted at an early age, was an equally devoted violinist, before settling on painting and architecture.  Fabbri was also one of the founders of the New York Metropolitan Opera.  Musical evenings were commonplace in Fabbri’s Florence mansion at 82 Via Cavour.¹²

Copello did not simply sail to Italy with his phonograph, hoist it onto a gaudily painted traveling medicine-show wagon and haul it from town to town, barking out the Italian equivalent of ‘step right up.’  From Italian news reports, correspondence from Edison’s chief London recording expert and other sources, a general outline can be drawn.  Gouraud loaned Copello two phonographs for the purpose ‘of raising a company, but used up to date principally for exhibitional purposes.’¹³ Copello first sailed to London to pick up the phonographs and the Catalani cylinder.  According to Genoese 1889 news reports, Copello was accompanied by 'a young and skillful English engineer' who was probably supplied by Gouraud while Copello was in London.                    

Copello’s first major demonstration was before King Umberto, which certainly required much advance diplomatic and logistical planning.  This suggests that Copello also was assisted by his Florentine neighbor Fabbri, who had a long-standing connection with the marketing of Edison’s Italian electrical operations in Italy and the requisite Italian political and social connections.  A circular which Copello distributed at his demonstrations set out a marketing plan, which was substantially identical to that of Edison himself.  The phonograph would be distributed through local agencies, which would lease rather than sell them outright, at a rate of 10 to 15 lira per month.¹⁴ Copello’s Italian phonograph enterprise was planned out in detail, with the knowledge and collaboration of both Edison and Gouraud.

As a highly cultured Italian, Copello’s ideas of what was worth recording differed from Gouraud’s. From the outset, Copello’s tastes seemed more aligned with those of his Florence neighbor Fabbri.  In late July or early August 1889, at the very outset of his efforts in Italy, Copello recorded the great operatic baritone Giuseppe Kaschmann at the peak of his career. This was widely reported in Italy, France and the United States.¹⁵  He also had already recorded Belletti, identified in Il Caffaro as a baritone from Bologna, performing an aria from L’Africaine by Meyerbeer, as well as a vast repertoire of other recordings demonstrating the value and versatility of the phonograph.¹⁶  Armed with his newly made recording of King Umberto, and Edison’s medal, Copello departed for Paris, where Edison himself arrived on August 12, 1889.¹⁷   Copello had no way of knowing that tensions already festered between Gouraud and Edison.                       

The Paris World’s Fair opened on May 5, 1889.  Edison’s exhibits included all of his major inventions and occupied a large portion of the American industrial and scientific exhibits at the Fair.  In early 1889, Edison’s chief laboratory assistant, the engineer William J. Hammer, was in Paris, charged with setting up and overseeing Edison’s exhibits.  Gouraud, meantime, at least in Edison’s view, attempted to wheedle his way into controlling the phonograph exhibit for his own profit through publicity and by charging admission in a special building erected for the purpose outside of the main Fair grounds. Edison was enraged.  On April 8, 1889, Edison wrote to Gouraud: ‘Phonographs can be exhibited to full advantage in the space allotted to all my inventions.  Ear tubes exclude all outside noise.  Refuse absolutely to charging entrance fees or the introduction of any side show or Barnum methods at Paris.’¹⁸

Four days later, Edison sent a follow-up:

Under cover of exciting public interest in the phonograph you have adopted a plan which retards the progress of real business and keeps the instrument before people as a curiosity with which they may make themselves familiar for a slight consideration, and so long as this preliminary system continues to pay, it appears to be your intention to sustain it.  Nothing of the kind was contemplated when I consented to you handling the business.  I believed that you would pursue genuine business methods and never dreamed that you would side-track the whole enterprise for the purpose of gaining time to indulge in a series of picayune side-shows which do far more harm to your real interests than can ever be compensated for by the temporary gain which they ensure.

The ‘general effect’ of Gouraud’s methods 'savors too much of the style of enterprise peculiar to a certain class of phrenologists and ventriloquists,’ Edison wrote.  ‘You have simply let your desire to make quick money run away with your better judgment.’¹⁹ On April 19, 1889, Edison telegraphed to Hammer: ‘Take absolutely no instruction as to the phonograph exhibit except from me.  Make no arrangement with Gouraud about sharing expenses. Pavilion must not cost more than three thousand.  Intend exhibit shall be my own, at my own expense, and under my control.  Edison.’²⁰   The Paris World’s Fair proved a triumph for Edison and his inventions, but the day-to-day operations of the phonograph exhibit were, from the outset, suffused with personal and professional tension which fermented into outright animosity between competing businessmen. 

Upon Edison’s arrival in Paris, he was met by a crowd of dignitaries and European Edison operatives, including Emile Durer.  Edison and his family took rooms at the luxurious Hotel du Rhin. On August 14, 1889, Edison sent Gouraud a telegram: ‘Understanding you agreed my proposal will be Paris Friday Morning Please secure room your hotel order crown of Italy Grade great Officer as telegraphed Figaro Copello.’²¹ The same day, Le Figaro published a front page article on Edison which included the following: ‘The King of Italy has just appointed Edison a grand officer of the Order of the Crown of Italy. Cavaliere Copello is charged with presenting the insignias.’²² From Paris, Edison sent a courtly and grateful reply to the King.²³  The presentation had been carefully choreographed by Copello, Gouraud and Edison himself.

Copello arrived in Paris on August 16, 1889.²⁴  On August 17, 1889, Edison hosted a morning reception attended by a crowd of dignitaries, journalists and business acquaintances, including Durer, Gouraud and the English journalist Robert Sherard, Paris correspondent for the Pall Mall Gazette.²⁵ In addition to the honors from King Umberto to Edison, Copello carried with him a sturdy wooden box, like a small rustic treasure chest, which he presented either to Gouraud or to Edison himself.  The box contains the cylinder on which King Umberto recorded his greeting to Edison in Rome on July 15, 1888.  Gouraud added it to his growing library of recorded flattering greetings from international and local celebrities.  It was the first of Copello’s cylinders to be delivered to the London branch of Edison’s Phonograph operations.

King of Italy cylinder box lid

At some point during his time in Paris, Copello presented to Edison the insignia of the Grand Officer of the Crown of Italy along with a letter on behalf of King Umberto and Queen Margherita.  The August 17, 1889 edition of Le Figaro reported on the front page: 

Cavaliere Copello arrived yesterday in Paris bringing Edison, from the King of Italy, the insignia of a grand officer of the order of the Crown . . . . Edison warmly thanked Cavaliere Copello and invited him to lunch at the Eiffel Tower.  At dessert, Mr. Copello drank to the health of Mrs. Edison and that of her illustrious husband.  Edison, in thanking him, was kind enough, in an eloquent toast, to recall that Le Figaro ‘had been the first to welcome him to this French soil . . . . Colonel Gouraud, Mr. Emile Durer, Mr. Scherard (sic), from the Pall Mall Gazette, then took the floor and finished the series of toasts.  A good day of which Edison will have excellent memories.       

Sherard reported in the August 19, 1889 Pall Mall Gazette that when he arrived at Edison’s hotel, and was shown into Edison’s elegant drawing room. ‘Edison was standing by the mantelpiece. At a secretaire by the window were Colonel Gouraud, Mr. Durer, and others.’ Mrs. Edison was at the other end of the room. In Sherard’s telling, while talking to Edison, 'one came up who was enthusiastic, and who "spoke in the name of humanity" to the "King of Science," and was verbose and gesticulative.  I think anyone who has seen Edison face to face with a Bore must love him for all his days. He has the sweetest smile and gives apparent attention, which is the courtesy of conversation.'

While Edison was indulging ‘the Bore,’ Gouraud pointed out Copello talking to Mrs. Edison at the other end of the room and said that King Umberto had sent Copello on a special mission to present the honorary insignia to Edison.  Sherard observed: ‘I could not help wishing that a few representatives of European flunkeydom could have seen Edison, when in pleasantry one addressed him as "Count."  His laugh then was worth all the revolutions that were ever made by democracy against the aforesaid flunkeydom.’  Sherard reported that he lunched with the Edisons, Copello, Durer and Gouraud at ‘chez Brebant, on the Eiffel Tower.’ 

The strange disappearance of Enrico Copello

If Copello played such a central role in the early history of the phonograph in Europe, how is it that virtually nobody has heard of him, even academic experts in the field?  The answer is exasperating.  In his 1906 memoir, Sherard hammered out a revised version of the Edison reception that is as ugly as it is enduring and as enduring as it is false:

When I was ushered into the room, I saw the master standing by the mantlepiece listening to an excitable little man who was dressed in the height of fashion and who was waving a box in his hand which looked like a jewel case. He was speaking, so I heard, ‘in the name of humanity.’ He was . . . most verbose and gesticulative . . . . I liked Edison before I had met him for his delightful attitude face to face with this bore.  His face wore the sweetest and kindest of smiles, and he was apparently giving his entire attention to the man. I heard afterwards, however, that at such times, a certain deafness aiding, he is able to fix his thoughts elsewhere.

Colonel Gouraud . . . who was present amongst the other people in the drawing room . . drew me aside and said, ‘I may tell you something which Mr. Edison would never tell you.  That gentleman who is talking to him is the Cavaliere Copello.  He has just come to Paris on a special mission from the King of Italy to Mr. Edison, bringing him the insignia of Grand Officer of the Crown of Italy.

‘Say, Gouraud,’ cried Edison, ‘let me see the letter that came along with the insignia. . . . [Sherard paraphrases the congratulatory letter] ‘This order confirms upon you, sir, the title of count,' said the Cavaliere Copello. 'and on you madame,' he added, turning and bowing to Mrs. Edison, 'the title of countess.’

I wished that a few representatives of European flunkeydom could have seen Edison’s face when this announcement was made to him by the little Cavaliere.  He actually laughed, much to Signor Copello’s astonishment, and not a little to his confusion.  

In Sherard’s 1906 version, Sherard falsified Copello’s role purely for comic effect, demeaning Copello and trivializing his role.  Sherard obviously consulted his own 1889 version and decided to make Copello ‘the Bore’ who had accosted Edison in the earlier version when, in reality, Copello had been at the opposite end of the room.  As a seasoned journalist fluent in French, Sherard necessarily knew that Copello was not a representative of 'European flunkeydom' whose only role was as emissary of the Italian King, but Edison’s agent for the phonograph in Italy because it was so reported in the Paris press, and because he dined with Edison, Copello, Durer and Gouraud in the Eiffel Tower’s Brebant restaurant after the reception at Edison’s hotel.

Sherard’s 1906 version was taken up by writers on the early history of the phonograph, Belle Epoque Paris, and other subjects.  Jill Jonnes’ immensely popular and well-received 2009 book, Eiffel’s Tower and the World’s Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, and Thomas Edison Became a Count, repeats Sherard’s account verbatim and unquestioned, including the ‘excitable little man who was dressed in the height of fashion and who was waiving a box in his hand’ who was ‘most verbose and gesticulative,’ specifically including the event in the book’s title, presumably for comic effect.  A recent biographer of Gouraud adds, incorrectly, that Copello spoke no English.

The most recent appearance of Sherard’s 1906 fabrication is in a 2023 biography of Mina Miller Edison, Edison’s wife.²⁶ Here too, the author presents Copello as nothing more than a pretentious emissary from a European king, the type of person for whom Edison had no patience. The work gives no indication that Copello had already recorded King Umberto and was conducting demonstrations throughout Italy on Edison’s behalf.  The author adds: ‘However, Edison’s snicker flabbergasted Cavaliere Copello.  Conscious that he was insulted, Mina remedied the situation and hosted the entire party for a celebratory luncheon at one of Paris’ finest restaurants.’  There is no citation for this particular information and no mention of it in Mina Edison’s surviving letters in the online Edison archives.  Its source was Sherard, as the author subsequently confirmed.

The greatest significance of Sherard’s 1906 fabrication is not that it unfairly made Edison look bad.  Edison and Gouraud did indeed treat Copello badly.  Rather, Sherard’s fib continues to obscure crucial facts about the history of the phonograph in Europe. Readers of these three sources would have no reason to suspect that Copello was anything more than a silly and historically inconsequential character whose importance begins and ends with the narrow comic role imposed on him.  Readers would have no reason to suspect that Copello worked with Edison and Gouraud directly, that all three had carefully choreographed publicizing the award Edison received from the King, and, crucially, that Copello was Edison’s agent for the phonograph in Italy where Copello made dozens and perhaps hundreds of important historical recordings.

So why has this caricature persisted while Copello’s actual role remains obscure?  And persisted notwithstanding Sherard’s obvious ethnic stereotyping purely for ridicule? Sherard was a well-connected ‘literary’ journalist whose 1906 memoir provides a funny and useful little anecdote which is more writer-friendly and easier to find than messy facts contained in actual 1889 newspapers and boring business correspondence. In Jonnes’s book, it is used to contrast unpretentious American knowhow with outdated European silliness. The Mina Miller Edison biography employs it to show Mina’s ability to salve over social embarrassments caused by Edison’s brusque manners. And so it persists, calcifying into 'common knowledge' with each repetition. 

The Phonograph’s debut in Genoa

Copello returned to Italy almost immediately after the August 19, 1889 reception and luncheon.²⁷ On August 22, 1889, Il Caffaro announced the Phonograph’s arrival in Genoa, with Copello as Edison’s Italian representative.  According to the accounts in Il Cittadino, Copello was accompanied by a ‘young and skillful English engineer,’ and played a recording of a message from Italy’s charge d’affaires in London.  All this, in conjunction with Gouraud’s receipt of the King Umberto cylinder, suggests that Copello was working directly with Gouraud as well as Edison and had traveled to London. 

Phonograph demonstrations took place at the Carlo Felice Theatre, the Sala Sivori and the Tursi Palace.²⁸  ‘The voice of the absent, of the distant, the dead, the most fleeting and sudden musical inspiration, all without the hindrance of time or distance, is captured and reproduced a thousand miles away after tens, twenties, or thirty years, not only with clarity and precision, but preserving the sound's characteristic character, reproducing even the acoustic environment,’ Copello told his audience at the Tursi Palace.

From Copello’s presentations and from the circular which he distributed, Copello’s Genoese auditors learned that Edison’s operations had gained control of the phonograph ‘throughout the civilized world.’  The machines would be leased to local agencies for 10 to 15 lira per month, and the cost of communicating by cylinder would ultimately be extremely cheap because cylinders could be reused, as opposed to paper which was discarded after a single use.

Throughout July and August 1889, Copello’s role as Edison’s agent for the phonograph in Italy, and purchaser of the Italian rights, was widely reported in the American, British and Italian press. There is nothing in the Edison online archive indicating that Edison, directly or indirectly, contradicted these reports, publicly or privately.  We have documented that Edison and Gouraud participated directly in Copello’s venture.  Nonetheless, several months before January 1, 1890, Edison, Gouraud and their many lawyers began negotiating the creation of a new company.  Through a series of interrelated contracts, the parties formed the Edison United Phonograph Company.

The gist of the arrangement was as follows.  Edison United would have the exclusive rights to the commercial exploitation of the phonograph in Europe and elsewhere outside the United States with the exception of Canada. The new company would be managed by Gouraud in London.  Edison himself would have no further involvement in the marketing of the phonograph outside the United States and Canada.  In exchange, Edison United would be obligated to buy all its sound reproduction devices, cylinders and supplies exclusively from Edison’s factories in the United States. 

Edison, at the time, believed that the most lucrative way to market the phonograph was by leasing phonographs to third parties, whether for business or entertainment purposes, and later outright sale.  Gouraud, however, jealously stuck to his notion of touring phonograph demonstrations under the control of Gouraud himself.  Neither Edison nor Gouraud nor anyone else appears to have advised Copello of this new arrangement or what it meant for Copello’s established operations in Italy. 

            On December 28, 1889, Copello sent Edison a letter suffused with anxiety:

My Dear Edison; 

Though I have been anxiously looking for some communication from you during all these months, as you led me to hope, I am still without any word from you.  I hope you have not quite forgotten the friend who had the honor of taking to you the token of the high appreciation of the King of Italy. I am also happy to have been the means of conveying to you a silver medal which my friend the Mayor of Como--the birthplace of Volta--tendered to you in the name of the city magistrates and which I delivered to the American Minister in Rome, last week, to be forwarded to you.  These facts show simply that I have done something, and not without good results, toward making your latest invention properly appreciated in this country, and toward laying the foundation for a large business which I hope will soon be entered upon and for which I trust I shall have your moral support and the help of your authority, in closing with the London House. I should not have considered the year well ended without sending to you and to my lady Edison, my warmest wishes for your joint happiness for the coming twelve months and many more to follow, as you both desire.  Hoping to have the pleasure of hearing from you soon, I remain Your Devoted Servant and Friend, E Copello.’²⁹

Edison delegated the response to his private secretary, Alfred Ord Tate:

My Dear Mr. Copello, -

I have received your letter of 28^th ultimo, enclosing a communication to Mr. Edison, which he has read, and he asked me to write and explain to you the condition of affairs in respect to the phonograph. Col. Gouraud is at the present time in America, where a large Company has been formed to handle all the foreign business, and in view of this arrangement, negotiations in connection with which were started several months ago in London, Colonel Gouraud has been actually unable to make any definite arrangements as to the disposition of the territory in Europe, which I presume is what you refer to in your letter.  When this Company is ready for active business, Col. Gouraud will be in a position to act more definitely than he has yet been able to do; and although it is unnecessary to remind him of the interest which you take in the business, and your desire for a closer connection therewith, as he has a full appreciation of it now, we will communicate with him and do all to assist you.³⁰

In the Spring of 1890, a Thomas Childs, apparently an attorney then in Florence, wrote to Edison on behalf of Copello.  On May 5, 1890, Edison’s secretary responded:

The details of the phonograph business in Europe have never been in Mr. Edison's hands, Col. Gouraud having had sole charge of them. Mr. Edison is not familiar with all that has been done by Col. Gouraud in connection with the phonograph abroad, and he has referred your communication to the New York Office of the Edison United Phonograph Company, the newly formed corporation which controls the instrument in Europe. Mr. Edison appreciates very highly the personal attention shown him while in Europe by Mr. Copello, and he trusts that the United Company may be able to arrange to place their Italian phonograph interests in Mr. Copello's hands.³¹

In February 1891, the opera-loving Fabbri received, as a gift from Edison himself, a phonograph with which Fabbri was delighted.  On February 12, 1891, Fabbri wrote to Edison: ‘My dear Edison, Your beautiful gift in the shape of a specimen of your most wonderful invention, the phonograph, has at last arrived and is in working order, much to the delight and admiration of my whole family. It will be listened to by many friends, and I thank you heartily for the handsome present.’³² Edison received the letter on March 10, 1891. The passenger list for the Royal Holland Lines steamer Maasam reveals that Copello and his family disembarked in New York on March 12, 1891.  This suggests that it was Copello who delivered the phonograph and that, as of March 1891, Copello was still also dealing directly, if not exclusively, with Edison himself.                                              

The creation of Edison United was premised on the understanding that the Gouraud-controlled company would purchase a minimum amount of phonographs and supplies from the Edison Phonograph Works in the United States.  Gouraud balked.  Edison’s profits were dependent on the number of phonographs and the amount of supplies sold to Edison United.  Similarly, the only way for Copello to expand his Italian operations in the manner described in his 1889 circulars was to purchase enough machines to supply a viable business operation throughout Italy.  Absence of enough machines limited Copello to conducting traveling exhibitions.

By August 1892, relations between Edison and Gouraud descended into slapstick.  On August 2, 1892, Edison’s attorney advised: ‘My experience in dealing with Gouraud satisfied me that the only way to handle him is with a club.  A vigorous use of a club will bring him to time, but nothing less will.’ On August 3, 1892, Edison’s personal secretary explained to a correspondent:

The phonograph in Europe is controlled by the Edison United Phonograph Company, and Mr. Edison has no voice in its affairs.  He is in hope that the phonograph in Europe will sooner or later get into the hands of business men who will place the machine before the public there in a proper manner, something which has not yet been done.  The actions of those who control the invention on the other side of the Atlantic are unaccountable to Mr. Edison on any theory of business, and what their object can be is a mystery.  From the policy which has been pursued by them thus far it would seem that they have no desire to do business.³³

The phonograph was exhibited at the Genoa Columbus festivities, but there is as of yet, no document proving that it was operated by Copello.  However, in 1892, Copello was the only person at least ostensibly authorized to market the phonograph in Italy. Thus, he is the only person we know of who could have managed it, personally or through employees.  Copello’s finances became strained.  On May 23, 1892, Copello wrote directly to Edison asking for an extension to repay a $1,000 personal loan from Edison himself, advising that it was impossible for him to timely repay the loan, which was originally due on June 20, 1890.³⁴ Edison deferred collecting the loan. So, in the midst of Genoa’s Columbian festivities and weeks before the Esposizione Italo-American proper was set to open, Copello found himself strapped for cash.  It is then no surprise that the phonograph exhibit was pared down to a minimum.

If Copello was still limited to two machines, there was little he could do. The phonograph exhibit at the 1892 Columbian Festivities in Genoa was a far cry from the phonograph’s debut at the Paris World’s Fair three years earlier.  Having already been displayed in Genoa in August 1889, it was no longer a novelty.  Rather than being the center of attention, it was relegated not to the Esposizione Italo-American proper, but to a kiosk on the grounds of the neighboring Catholic Missions exhibits. ‘As we have already announced,’ stated Il Caffaro, ‘two days ago a kiosk was opened in the garden of this exhibition, where 23 collections of photographs are visible through powerful stereoscopes, and where there is a working phonograph.’

Scaled back, yes.  But not without interest.  A week before the Esposizione Italo-American opened, who should show up in Rome and, with great public fanfare, to record Roberto Stagno and Emma Bellencioni, the stars of Mascagni’s sensational new opera Cavalleria Rusticana?  Emile Durer, the enterprising impresario, Mascagni’s manager.³⁵ The French papers say that Durer made the recordings to send to Edison.  However, they likely ended up with Gouraud since they would have been made under the auspices of Edison United.  It is not yet known whether Durer used his own phonograph or made the recordings with the assistance of Copello and his employees.  Meantime, Sivori was in Genoa performing valedictory concerts, charity concerts and private salon recitals for Selene Hofer and other members of Genoa’s elite.

On August 5, 1892, Mascagni conducted a widely publicized concert of his works at the Ducal Palace in Genoa, presumably in the company of Durer as manager.³⁶ Stagno and Bellencioni arrived later.  Genoa during the Columbus Festivities was a hub of musical activity, with the presence of Verdi, Sivori, and countless opera singers and other musicians of international and local repute.  It cannot yet be said with certainty that Durer was there.  But it was on the route back from Rome to Paris, and a fertile ground for an impresario and his three prominent Italian clients.  Also, while Copello (or his employees), as far as is presently known, had only two phonographs at his disposal, precluding the grand displays that were possible in Paris in 1889, the Columbian Festivities would have provided an equally fertile ground to expand Copello’s library of recordings for use in the traveling exhibitions to which he was likely limited.

Copello had no choice but to work directly with the Gouraud London operation and with whoever succeeded him.  In marketing the phonograph in Italy, Copello 'made a great many trips to London and was constantly travelling through Italy interviewing the deputies and senate and generally working in the right quarters to make the phonograph a success,' wrote Wall Street financier Charles Henry Coster in an 1893 letter to Edison requesting a modest loan to see Copello through financial difficulties.  According to Coster, Fabbri had written Coster twice on Copello’s behalf.  Copello worked directly through London-based Edison United, managed by Gouraud.  Presumably, any cylinders recorded on machines loaned to Copello by Gouraud/Edison United remained their property.³⁷ This, combined with Copello’s frequent trips to London, explains how and why the Mystery Cylinders ended up there.

Sivori’s last concert

In 1895, Sivori’s friend, the young writer Egisto Roggero, published his first book, Vecchie Storie Musicale ('Old Musical Stories').  The fifth essay is entitled L’Ultimo concerto di Camillo Sivori – the final concert of Camillo Sivori.  Roggero tells a story he heard from one of Sivori’s intimate acquaintances: In the year before his death, Sivori performed at an elite soiree ‘in the drawing-room of one of the best aristocratic families of his Genoa.’  His hosts asked him to perform one of his own tours de force, a Moto Perpetuo, for which he had only written out the accompaniment but not the solo part because Sivori regarded this composition as his alone, not to be performed by others. According to Sivori’s friend and biographer Adele Pierrottet: ‘This strange fantasy, made in imitation of another of Paganini's, which enthralled both the listener and the orchestra, he performed it from memory in a way that truly astounded those who saw and heard it.’³⁸

In Roggero’s telling: ‘The pianist, with the music in front of him, begins the accompaniment.  But Sivori does not begin: What is it?  He has forgotten his favorite piece, his warhorse, the factor in so many of his triumphs! The poor old man is pale and visibly in pain: thick beads of sweat run down his noble forehead.  Everyone is deeply moved. He murmurs, smiling and resigned: - I am old, gentlemen, my memory serves me little use!...  This was Camillo Sivori's last concert.’  According to the Italian scholars granted access to the privately held Sivori Archive, there does indeed exist a Sivori Moto Perpetuo lacking a solo violin part, and for which only the orchestral score and piano accompaniment survive.  The outlines of Roggero’s tale are therefore confirmed.

The state of Sivori’s health, week to week and day to day, is crucial in determining whether this last concert could have taken place after the onset of illness in September 1893 and his return to Genoa in October.  If not, Sivori’s only known opportunity to have recorded the Mystery Cylinders is during the Columban festivities of 1892. Let’s tread this slippery ground carefully.  Sivori spent the winter and spring of 1893 in Genoa, writing at least twice to his good friend Selene Hofer.  On May 16, 1893, Sivori sent Hofer a note apologizing profusely that he could not play music with her the following evening as planned because of an unavoidable family obligation.  Days later, he was back in Paris.

 

Letter to Selene Hofer 16 May 1893, front

 

 

Letter to Selene Hofer 16 May 1893, overleaf

Recall, from our previous installment, that in the Spring of 1893, Sivori performed Paganini at a Parisian salon in the presence of Madame Remenyi while her husband, the violinist Edouard Remenyi, was winding up his affairs in Paris. Sivori wrote to his friends about his own good health and busy schedule.  As late as July 30, 1893, Sivori travelled some 200 kilometers from Paris to Tours to visit friends.  In late August 1893, he dined with Princess Mathilde Bonaparte at her summer home. In the midst of all this, he also ordered new photographs from the celebrity photographer Pierre Petit.

 

It was only in September 1893 that Sivori became seriously ill.  By October 30, 1893, he was well enough to return to Genoa. So when could this last concert have taken place?  Roggero’s witness told him it was within a year of Sivori’s death.  We know that, as of May 16, 1893, Sivori was still planning to perform music with Selene Hofer. There is no evidence of any decline in Sivori’s powers during his stay in Genoa prior to his return to Paris a few days after his note to Hofer. Ordering new publicity photographs does not suggest retirement. The Parisian soiree which Remenyi’s widow recalled must have taken place after Sivori’s arrival there in May 1893 but before Sivori fell ill in September 1893.  On November 12, 1893 Sivori wrote from Genoa that he wanted to return to Paris and play music with his ‘favorite pianist’ Francis Thomé.

 

Letter from Genoa 12 November 1893, front

 

 

 

Letter from Genoa 12 November 1893, overleaf

 

 

On November 21, 1893, the French press reported that Sivori’s health was completely restored and that he planned to return to Paris the following spring.³⁹                 

Regardless of his fluctuating health, Sivori evidenced no intention of ‘going gently into that good night.’[3] He wanted to go back to Paris.  Pierrottet tells us that Sivori planned to do so even the day before he died.  The paleness, thick beads of running sweat and visible pain which Roggero described suggest that Sivori was indeed physically ill during this ‘last concert,’ which is consistent with reports of his fluctuating health.  Because there is presently no evidence that Sivori’s musical vigor declined prior to his illnesses beginning the fall of 1893, the final concert Roggero described must have taken place after Sivori’s return to Genoa. Alas, there is no evidence that the phonograph made a reappearance in Genoa at any time in 1893. Now what?

A thoroughly implausible and farfetched deus ex machina neatly ties it all up

Around the time of Sivori’s return to Genoa, Sivori’s admirers formed the Società Drammatica Lirica di beneficenza Camillo Sivori (the Camillo Sivori Charity Dramatic Opera Society).  The Society appointed Sivori himself as its honorary president.  Formation of the Society coincided with Sivori’s precarious health and return to Genoa, suggesting that Sivori’s lifelong friends and admirers were hoping to rally his strength.  The Society’s concerts were held at the Sala Sivori, which served as its headquarters.  The inaugural concert took place on October 29, 1893.   The Society’s frequent concerts were well-attended and well-received. 

On January 23, 1894, Il Caffaro published a long article about the phonograph.  The article was serious, sentimental, satirical and even comical.  The phonograph, the author wrote, permits one to hear the voices of loved ones who are now far away, perhaps in America or Africa. ‘In this way you can create the illusion of being close to him, recapture the past – disprove those who believe that this past can never rise again, and leaves nothing behind.’  Within five days, the phonograph had returned to Genoa.

‘Il fonografo alla Sala Sivori’ proclaimed the headline in the January 28, 1894 edition of Il Caffaro: 

‘Edison’s portentous inventions, by now known to all, attracts every day to the Sala Sivori a discreet public of onlookers who never tire of enjoying the operatic pieces reproduced so perfectly by the wonderful instrument.

Having received many requests, the owner has decided to leave in a few days: I therefore believe that it is appropriate to take advantage of this favorable offer without delay so as not to miss out on so much fun.

The said phonograph still reproduces, which is difficult to find in others, the song for two voices: in fact the duet in Cavalleria Rusticana between Santuzza and Turiddu, performed by the tenor Pellegrino and the soprano Panizza, is faithfully reproduced by the said instrument. . .

The owner of this phonograph has been able to collect a repertoire of attractive and highly selected pieces, so that a phonograph audition in the Sala Sivori is equivalent to attending one of the most elite musical concerts.

Thus from the Serenata from Faust, Caterina idolized, masterfully performed by the bass Beltrami, to the romance of the 4^th act of the opera Pellegrina exquisitely illumined by the distinguished tenor Morales, to the farewell to the mother in Cavalleria Rusticana, to the Casta diva in Norma, to the suicide aria in the Mona Lisa, and a whole parade of motifs that come to delight our ears, giving us the perfect illusion of being in the theater and witnessing the melodramatic action.’

An astonishing little article.  Nothing could be farther from what Gouraud or Edison envisioned as realistic uses of the phonograph.  Because these phonographic concerts were held in the Sala Sivori suggests that the owner used a state-of-the-art horn for sufficient amplification instead of, or in addition to, the standard listening tubes.  A far cry from the stodgy Victorian government officials and businessmen that Gouraud liked to immortalize, or the stenography that Edison initially believed would be the phonograph’s most profitable application.  Classical concerts via the phonograph in Genoa in January 1894, and obviously elsewhere in Italy earlier – quite astonishing indeed.  Il Caffaro did not identify the ‘owner’ of the phonograph.  But the only person we currently know of with the resources and knowledge to create such a recorded library of Italian operatic celebrities is Copello, who had been so engaged since July 1889, beginning with the Giuseppe Kaschmann and Belletti recordings.

On January 30, 1894, a writer in Il Caffaro stated: ‘Today, then, is the last day.  The proprietors ask me to announce that, as they are about to leave for other cities, they are staying on today, inviting those who have not yet participated to enjoy the instructive and delightful entertainment.  Here is an opportunity that intelligent readers will certainly not miss.’ 

On February 8, 1894, alas, nine days after this last phonographic concert was to occur, Il Caffaro announced that Sivori, ‘the illustrious violinist, our compatriot, is now cured of the persistent illness that plagued him for so many months, and nothing more is needed now than the care and attention of convalescence.  Because of the friendship that he has always shown with Maestro Monleone, the great Sivori is very interested in the programme of the private concert that he is organising for the benefit of the families of the victims of Aigues-Mortes, and in his philanthropy and patriotism, he is very sorry that he will not be able to take an active part. In the meantime, we, rejoicing with the famous artist for his recovered health, hope and look forward to seeing him at the concert itself.’

            Are we too late?                                 

Almost, but not quite.  The proprietors of the phonograph exhibition had a change of heart. Il Caffaro for February 10, 1894 reported: ‘Starting tomorrow, for a few days, the Edison phonograph will no longer be displayed in the Sivori Hall, but in Maestro Bossola’s music shop, which is also open in the evening hours’ – Sivori’s old friend Maestro Bossola, sponsor of the Sala Sivori.  Sivori died nine days later. 

What we know and what we do not – some final thoughts

The Mystery Cylinders are consistent with other brown wax cylinders manufactured prior to Sivori’s death.  Sivori is the only violinist known to have performed and had access to the unpublished Second Violin Concerto.  At the earliest time that the Mystery Cylinders could have been made, Wilhelmj had abandoned public performance; there is no evidence in the Wilhelmj Archive that Wilhelmj ever met Sivori or performed any of his music. That leaves Sivori as the most plausible artist on the Sivori Concerto cylinders, provided he had the capacity to make the recordings and the opportunity to do so.  We have seen that Sivori remained active until shortly before his death. 

There were two time periods we know of when Sivori had the motivation and the opportunity to record his Second Violin Concerto and the two Paganini selections.  As we shall soon show in ‘Paganini’s Witches,’ our separate essay examining the ‘Witches’ Dance’ cylinders, Sivori had every motivation to do so, because Sivori was the last living exponent of Paganini’s style, as opposed to being merely a master of the techniques needed to perform the recently published scores.

The phonograph was present in Genoa during the 1892 Columbus festivities, in which Sivori participated.  The scaled-down phonograph exhibit was consistent with Copello’s dire financial straits and the lack of assistance from Gouraud and Edison.  Weighing in favor of 1892 are Sivori’s valedictory concerts in Genoa and his unquestioned continuing instrumental prowess.  However, ‘Sivori’s last concert,’ as recounted by Roggero, in all likelihood took place after Sivori’s return to Genoa in October 1893.  Sivori also could have recorded the Mystery Cylinders at any time from the arrival of the phonograph exhibition in Genoa in late January 1894 until the final relapse of his illness and death.  If that is the case, Sivori must have recorded his musical legacy within weeks or even days before his death, under circumstances as heroic as they are heartbreaking. 

Whether recorded in 1892 or 1894, Sivori is most likely the performer on the Paganini and Sivori Concerto cylinders and of the Witches’ Dance.  However, there presently is insufficient evidence to attribute The Gypsies or the Minuetto Pizzicato to Sivori, no matter how tempting it may be to do so.  The Mystery Cylinders are directly responsible for my discovery of the heretofore unsuspected and astonishing role Copello played in the history of early musical recordings.  Now that his significance is known, perhaps documentation will be unearthed which enables us to trace his activities with greater precision and certainty.

It is our fortune that Sivori, at the very end of his life, chose to preserve an art of which he was the last practitioner and which, with his passing, would die out with no possibility of revival.  Maestro Sivori’s recordings are an invitation to explore.  They are an invitation to aesthetic experiment, even danger.  A much needed invitation indeed.

These recordings most likely were made in the brief window between the arrival of the phonograph exhibition in Genoa in late January 1894 and Sivori’s death about three weeks later. If this is the case, an ailing Sivori nonetheless gathered his remaining strength, picked up his beloved violin and, with a superhuman tenacity, created a unique and irreplaceable legacy, his final triumph, magically reappearing throughout the world 130 years later. ‘Sivori is dead,’ the Violin Times announced in 1894.  To paraphrase Baron von Moltke, Sivori who has already long rested in his grave once again raises his voice and greets the present.  In the words of the Genoa students who carried Sivori home on their shoulders in 1892:

Viva Sivori!

© 2023 by Andrew O. Krastins. All rights reserved.

          

1. Il Caffaro, 12 February 1894.
2. The Etude, vo. 6, no. 12, November 28, 1888, p. 185.
3. The Musical Courier, vol. 18, no. 2, Jan. 9, 1889. 
4. TAE Papers/Digital: https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/D8905ACF1
5. The Society of the Army of the Cumberland, Ninth Reunion, Cincinnati (1876).
6. New York Tribune, 5 August 1920, p. 6 (available online at https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1920-04-05/ed-1/seq-6/#date1=1770&index=1&rows=20&words=COPELLO+Copello+Enrico+ENRICO&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext=%22Enrico+Copello%22+&y=18&x=16&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1)
7. Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d’Italia, 23 August 1880; p. 3505 (available online at https://www.google.com/books/edition/Gazzetta_ufficiale_del_Regno_d_Italia/fKuSXVkcFnYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Enrico+Copello+firenze&pg=PA3505&printsec=frontcover)
8. Letter from Hugh De Coursey Hamilton to Alfred Ord Tate, October 13th, 1889, TAE Papers online https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/D8959AFL
9. Pittsburgh Dispatch; 15 August 1889, p. 4 (available online at https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/pages/results/?state=&date1=1889&date2=1890&proxtext=The+invention+awakened+great+interest+throughout+the+country&x=13&y=14&dateFilterType=yearRange&rows=20&searchType=basic
10. Sessa, Maurizio (2017) La famiglia Fabbri, p. 21-84; Edizioni Polistampa, Livorno; Hall, H. (Ed.) (1895); America’s Successful Men of Affairs, v. 1, p. 228; The New York Tribune.
11. Sessa, 82-85, 91-92.
12. Letter from Egisto Paolo Fabbri to Thomas Alva Edison, February 22nd, 1891, TAED https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/D9148AAF
13. Letter from Hugh De Coursey Hamilton to Alfred Ord Tate, October 13th, 1889 TAED https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/D8959AFL
14. Il Caffaro; “Gli Esperimenti del Fonografo a Palazzo Tursi;” 27 August 1889.
15. Gil Blas, 13 August 1889, p. 4; BNF https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k7538297x/f4.image.r=Kaschmann%20Copello%20Gil%20Blas?rk=21459;2; Le XIX Siecle; 14 August 1889, p. 2; BNF https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k75608765/f3.image.r=Kaschmann%20Copello%20edison?rk=42918;4; Musical Courier, 11 September 1889, p. 229.
16. Il Cittadino, “Il fonografo al municipo”; 27 August 1889. 
17. Letter from Mina Miller Edison to Mary Valinda (Mrs. Lews) Miller, August 12th, 1889; TAED https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/X018A702(accessed 27 Sept. 2023).
18. TAED: http://edison.rutgers.edu/digital/document/LB029010
19. Letter from Thomas Alva Edison to George Edward Gouraud dated 12 April 1889, TAED: https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/LB029076 (accessed on 11 September 2018).
20. Letter from Thomas Alva Edison to William Joseph Hammer, April 19th, 1889 TAED https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/X098A029 (accessed 27 September 2023).
21. Telegram from Thomas Alva Edison to George Edward Gouraud, August 14th, 1889, TAED https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/D8905AFC (accessed 27 September 2023).
22. Le Figaro, 14 August 1889, BNF https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k2808528/f1.image.r=(prOx:%20%22Edison%22%2020%20%22Capello%22)?rk=64378;0
23. Il Caffaro, Supplemento al numero 235; “Edison e l’Italia”; 23 August 1889; p. 1.
24. Le Figaro, 17 August 1889 BNF https://www.auction.fr/vente/collections-manuscrits-livres-photographies-timbres-de-chine-et-divers-bandes-dessinees-615335?page=4
25. The King Umberto cylinder – in its original box – was recently acquired by the British Library and was identified as the 1889 Copello cylinder by Andrew O. Krastins.
26. Alexandra Rimer, Seduced by the Light: the Mina Miller Edison Story (2023), p. 108.
27. Il Caffaro, 23 August 1889.
28. Il Caffaro Supp., 23 August 1889; Il Caffaro, 24, 27 August 1889.
29. Letter from Enrico Copello to Thomas Alva Edison, December 28th, 1889, TAED https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/D8905AKI (accessed 27 September 2023).
30. Letter from Alfred Ord Tate to Enrico Copello, January 17th, 1890, TAED https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/LB036118 (accessed 27 September 2023).
31. Letter from Alfred Ord Tate to Thomas Childs, May 3rd, 1890, TAED https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/LB040404 (accessed 27 September 2023).
32. Letter from Egisto Paolo Fabbri to Thomas Alva Edison, February 22nd, 1891, TAE Papers: https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/D9148AAF (accessed 27 September 2023).
33. Letter from Alfred Ord Tate to William Lynd, August 3rd, 1892. TAED https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/D9211ACB (accessed 27 September 2023).
34. Letter from Alfred Ord Tate to Enrico Copello, June 9th, 1892, TAED  https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/LB056645 (accessed 27 September 2023).
35. Le Menestrel, Journal du Musique,. 3 July 1892, p. 215; BNF https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5614503x/f6.image.r=Durer%20Menestrel%20Stagno%201892MenestrelDurerEdison?rk=21459;2 (accessed 27 September 2023).
36. Il Caffaro 15 July 1892, p. 2.
37. Letter from Charles Henry Coster to Thomas Alva Edison, January 31st, 1893, TAED https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/document/D9302AAG (accessed 27 September 2023).
38. Pierrottet, p. 85. 
39. La Charente: Organ Republicain Quotidien, 21 November 1893.

 

Mary Stewart, Lead Curator of Oral History, writes:

The key mission of the British Library Oral History team is to gather as many stories about life in the UK as possible – to create a tapestry of experiences, reflections and insights for use by researchers today and in the future. But why would someone agree to record their life story? In a recent recorded discussion at an oral history symposium, celebrated artist Hew Locke explains why he accepted our invitation:

Hester Westley in conversation with Hew Locke at the NLS Symposium. Photo: Camille Johnston.

Hew Locke on recording his life story

Download transcript

Although Locke’s recording with Hester Westley for the extensive Artists’ Lives collection is closed in his lifetime, he sums up in a phrase the aims of the Library’s life story programme: we capture the unofficial histories of people and of moments.

A central pillar of the Library’s work in oral history is National Life Stories (NLS), the oral history fieldwork charity established in 1987 by Paul Thompson and Asa Briggs, supported by founding Trustee Jennifer Wingate. The in-depth biographical interview – the ‘life story’ – is the core methodology of National Life Stories.

But how do we attempt to accomplish the gargantuan task of recording life stories across the UK? How do we conduct a life story, and how does this methodology contrast with other oral history techniques? What value can a life story collection bring to wider policy debates? What specific challenges do we face in archiving life story interviews?

To explore these and related questions, a permanent, open-access (free to all) edition of the leading journal Oral History presents for the first time a comprehensive volume of articles interrogating the life story methodology. The special issue of the journal offers many insights and features numerous embedded links to audio files, which we are confident will be essential reading for scholars and practitioners – whether you are just setting out in oral history or have decades of experience.

This special edition of Oral History arises from the papers and discussions from National Life Stories’ International Symposium on the Life Story in summer 2023. The journal was edited by Mary Stewart (NLS Director) and Rob Perks (NLS Trustee and former Director), and the publication features contributions from many members of the National Life Stories team, in conjunction with internationally acclaimed oral historians and colleagues who discuss various aspects of oral history and life story practice.

Alongside the full transcript of the conversation between Hew and Hester which introduced this blog, the highlights include:

• Canadian scholar Alexander Freund’s thoughtful and provocative paper on the nature of the life story interview, considering who it is for, how it captures a ‘life’, some of the ethical implications particular to the method, and the re-use of the material now and in the future.
• Indira Chowdhury’s (founder of the Oral History Association of India) reflections on institutional histories and life stories in the context of post-independence India. NLS Project Director Niamh Dillon then adds her own experience of conducting numerous institutional histories for NLS.
• Alistair Thomson’s (Monash University, Melbourne) retrospective assessment of his career researching using the life story. Weaving in examples of his work in the UK and Australia he articulates the value in the long-form interview and gives some practical tips on how we can approach the cataloguing and re-use of material.
• Donald A Ritchie’s (Historian Emeritus of the United States Senate) comprehensive review of publications on the life story, which contextualises the debates in the journal.
• Elizabeth Wright (NLS Interviewer), Madeline White (NLS Deputy Director) and Wendy Rickard’s (a frequent collaborator with NLS and the British Library) insights on the practice of life story interviewing, including how we frame questions, what we can gain from conducting life story interviews with younger people, interviewing over time and how life stories compare with other types of interview.

In addition to these articles, three panel discussions from the Symposium are printed in full:

• An animated session focusing on the spectre of new technology for the reuse, analysis and ethics of archived life stories, which brought together experts in the field. NLS Archivist Charlie Morgan introduces the key issues and is joined by academics Julianne Nyhan (Technical University Darmstadt and University College London) and Doug Boyd (Louie B Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries), in a discussion chaired by NLS Trustee Andrew Flinn (University College London).
• For the past fifteen years NLS has made great strides in capturing oral histories of science, technology and the environment. Paul Merchant (NLS Oral Historian and Researcher) outlined five observations from the 50 interviews he conducted for An Oral History of Farming, Land Management and Conservation in Post-war Britain - a project funded by Arcadia. NLS Trustee Jon Agar (University College London) then chaired a wide-ranging panel discussion on the value of life stories of the environment with Paul, Sally Horrocks (NLS Senior Academic Advisor for Science and Technology) and Fiona Harvey (environment editor at The Guardian).
• The final part of the Symposium brought together all of the international panellists with Rob Perks and Mary Stewart, chaired by Don Ritchie, to speak to the future of the life story. The discussion draws together themes addressed in the entire issue of the journal and responds to reflections on the life story method contributed by Symposium attendees.

Thanks to the speakers and authors, the editors, designers and proof reader of Oral History, the Symposium attendees, the NLS team and Trustees, British Library events team, and – of course – to all our past and current interviewees. This special edition of Oral History contains something of interest for anyone involved in the study and collection of life stories. Visit the Oral History Society website to download the journal.