Yesterday, I was all set to post something fun for a Sunday morning, but now everything feels rather ominous. I’m hoping that’s thunder I’m hearing on this grim, overcast morning. How many times do we have to adjust to just how horrible everything is, only for it to get worse?
But life goes on, at least for the time being. And there’s something to be said for escapism. What is art, after all (or at least the art I choose to embrace), but the pursuit of beauty, order, and affirmation of the better parts of ourselves.
In preparation for yesterday’s broadcast of one of my radio shows, “Sweetness and Light,” I constructed a playlist around the theme of summer reading. One of the candidates, which would have been a shoe-in, was this recording, by Florence Smithson, of Sophie’s Waltz Song (“For Tonight”) from Edward German’s operetta after Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones.” I fell totally in love with it and was crestfallen not to be able to locate it anywhere as a digital download. The few recordings I could find all left me cold – Joan Sutherland may have been a fabulous singer, but her version lacks the charm, personality, and diction Smithson conveys in her recording, made all the way back in 1912. Since the few modern recordings I could find all paled in comparison, I had to settle for an orchestral arrangement by Ernest Tomlinson.
This is not the first time I’ve fallen in love with a recording, only to discover it never made it to CD. So much is lost every time we change formats. Let this be a lesson to you, folks. Hang on to your physical media!
Florence Smithson, beguiling in 1912