VOCAL SUPPORTERS

Daniel Cariaga generously called attention to the only person I know who locally sounded a fanfare to the late and great baritone Lawrence Tibbett on his 100th birthday: Los Angeles vocal musicologist and lecturer William R. Osteck (“The Baritone Time Didn’t Forget,” Oct. 27).

Throughout the year Osteck has repeatedly performed his lecture on Tibbett. Widely acknowledged as a Keeper of the Sacred Baritonial Flame, Osteck is a popular speaker on both Tibbett and his sturdy-voiced contemporary, the late John Charles Thomas. His Tibbett portrait includes both rare recordings and clips from his motion pictures.

Encore, Tibbett, encore!

BILL ERWIN

Studio City

*

I was delighted by Herbert Glass’ On the Record (Oct. 13), featuring a long-overdue discovery of the legacy of soprano Lina Pagliughi.

I must correct him on one point, that Pagliughi’s “entire [recorded] legacy is on Cetra,” the Italian label popular in the 1950s. Her recording career began with a complete “Rigoletto” issued by HMV in 1928, continued with Italian Parlophone in the early to mid-1930s and included one recording in this country by RCA Victor. The most curious issue was an LP on Disneyland Records in which she and tenor Giuseppe Manurita sang selections from the Italian soundtrack of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

DAVID SCHMUTZ

Glendale