PRE ORDERS

The Hariclea Darclée biography has 500 pages. It is a full colour print on high quality paper, in a gorgeous design by Dick Bak. There's an extensive names register and it features a detailed 75+ pages long career retrospect. It has over 100 photos and facsimiles, all restored to their full, original lustre in a painstaking process. All photos have moreover been hand-colourized to perfection in a equally time consuming process. The book has a limited edition of 100 copies. Released on a non-profit base the book costs € 75 + € 25 registered international shipping. That is expensive, as was printing it in this quality and quantity.

Specs

• 500 Pages
• Luxurious hardback with dust wrapping
• 75 Page full career chronology
• 100+ photographs and facsimiles
• Detailed names index
• Gorgeous design by Dick Bak in a full colour print
• Beautiful silky matted paper
• Based on 25 years of on location research
• Page format 27 x 20 cm, large size, readable letters.
• Price: € 75 + € 25 registered international shipping
• Preview pdf: download

• Ordering details for buying, reselling or donations: email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call me at +31-6-22338381.

ADDITIONAL CD

We are currently working towards recording an additional CD to the book, to be recorded in April 2023. We are still € 2,000 short to record the program as we planned it and urge those interested to come forward and support us with donations of € 500,  the most common amount of support that we encounterd for the book. Of course, larger donations are welcome, but we have seldom encountered them.

The CD will be a beautiful printed and designed collector's item that features Darclée's song recordings as I have rediscovered them in the book. In addition we will record large sections of Darclée's forgotten 1906 Romanian opera creation Enoch Arden by the composer Alexis Catargi. The score of this opera, the real first Romanian opera (in Italian language) was long considered lost, but I rediscovered it in the process of the research for the biography. Over the decades I have also bought scores of Romanian songs composed for and dedicated to Darclée, some dating back to before she started her career, when she was still billed as Hariclea Hartulary, singing in the salons of Braila, Tulcea, Iaşi or Botosani. These songs are lovely light hearted gems, almost folklore like. The excerpts from Catargi's Enoch Arden are going to be a genuine surprise. A lightly orchestrated, dense, declamatory work with immense vocal demands on the soprano who sings Annie Lee. As well known as this musical style was at the time, so forgotten it is today along with such stylistically close operas as Mancinelli's Ero e Leandro, or Mascagni's much later Isabeau. There are ghostly echos of Mascagni's Iris, and stunning foreshadowings of Elektra and Turandot. At the same time it is interspersed with hauntingly beautiful, lyrical lines. It is also the only opera in the book apart from Vallini's Il Voto (score lost) from which no music whatsoever exists in recordings or the trade circuit. As such, it is completely unique and it will be a meaningfull addition the the corresponding Enoch Arden chapter in the biography.

In order to better understand and enjoy Darclée's career, I went a long way in finding the last missing recordings of odd roles and so on. In the last decade many repertoire oddities became available through the internet or otherwise. Ultimately I even found obscure live recordings of Mancinelli's Ero e Leandro to document that chapter in sound. As the last missing link, recording Enoch Arden will make the book 'complete'.