Part of this short consists of musical snippets from the first commercially successful exercise in motion picture synchronized sound, a variety show of musical acts produced by Warner Brothers and shown to sell-out audiences at a large New York City theater in 1926. By far the stand-out piece is Giovanni Martinelli belting out the aria "Vesti la glubba" from Ruggero Leoncavallo's opera, Pagliacci. This performance could define the term "full voice." It is the sort of thing to which many guys singing in the shower aspire, and there is Martinelli up on the big screen (dressed in a sadly comical clown suit) conveying his emotions by nearly blowing his lungs out. While many of the other musical snippets shown here could imply that arts patrons of the 1920s had lower expectations in regard to standards of musical entertainment than what modern day people would demand, Martinelli's blast from the past passes the test for any age. This kind of makes a person wonder how many similarly gifted musicians of the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, etc. may be totally forgotten today because sound recording technology took so many centuries to get off the ground.
Review of Okay for Sound
