Edison Foreign Releases—Cylindres Edison Moulés Sur Or and Edison Goldguss Walze

In addition to the Gold-Moulded recordings, which were recorded and manufactured in the United States, Edison recorded and released cylinders from offices in London, Paris, and Berlin. While many foreign cylinders were issued in the United States in series such as Edison's British, Bohemian, French, German, Swedish, and Norwegian series, cylinders were also recorded and manufactured overseas in several markets, including France and Germany. Much less is known about Edison's overseas operations and cylinders than the U.S. cylinders.

Our first foreign series is a group of releases recorded in Paris from approximately 1904 to 1909 under the name " Cylindres Edison Moulés Sur Or." Although some of these recordings were popular commercial tunes sung in French, the vast majority were operatic arias and short classical works, such as the selection above, sung by the famous French tenor Lucien Muratore, which is accompanied by its original box—presumably what one would have found in a turn-of-the-century Parisian music store. There are approximately 100 French releases in the UCSB collection.

Berlin supplied the Edison Company with dozens of German-language cylinder recordings from around 1902 to 1912. In addition to popular songs of the day, the "Edison Goldguss Walze" cylinders, like their French counterparts, showcased operatic arias performed by European singers. Interestingly, the Goldguss Walze series also includes numerous German comedy sketches, which are featured in the cylinder radio show Deutsche komische Zylinder.