male voice. Therefore, it is the lowest voice [the bass, de Silva], which is "farthest away, and thus his relationship is the coldest and most retrained". The baritone [the King, Don Carlo] "manages to draw somewhat closer, although indirectly and ambiguously", but Baldini continues by noting that it the highest male voice [the tenor, Ernani] who "gets near a relationship which if not complete [....] is at least reciprocated for long periods". Finally, while Baldini agrees with Parker that it is act 3 of Ernani which is the strongest - "in my opinion it marks the first occasion on which Verdi enclosed within a fairly extended musical space (about twenty five minutes) a perfect structural unit" - he also echoes Budden and De Van in noting the importance of the opening horn motif and references to the horn which recur throughout the opera and which ends with the final horn call, the fatal summons to Ernani by de Silva. Recordings The first complete recording of an opera was the 1904 recording of Ernani, on 40 single-sided discs, by the Gramophone Company in England. Later recordings include: References Citations Cited sources Baldini, Gabriele, (trans. Roger Parker) (1980), The Story of Giuseppe Verdi: Oberto to Un Ballo in Maschera. Cambridge, et al.: Cambridge University Press. Budden, Julian (1984), The Operas of Verdi, Volume 1: From Oberto to Rigoletto. London: Cassell. . De Van, Gilles (trans. Gilda Roberts) (1998), Verdi’s Theater: Creating Drama Through Music. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. (hardback), Kimbell, David, in Holden, Amanda (ed.) (2001), The New Penguin Opera Guide, New York: Penguin Putnam. Melitz, Leo (1921), opera synopsis in The Opera Goer's Complete Guide Parker, Roger (1998), "Ernani in Stanley Sadie, (Ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Vol. 2, pp. 70–73. London: MacMillan Publishers, Inc. Verdi, Giuseppe, Ernani, full score critical edition, ed. Claudio Gallico, Chicago & Milan: University of Chicago Press & G. Ricordi, 1985. . Other sources Gossett, Philip (2006), Divas and Scholar: Performing Italian Opera, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Martin, George, Verdi: His Music, Life and Times (1983), New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. Osborne, Charles (1969), The Complete Opera of Verdi, New York: Da Capo Press, Inc. Parker, Roger (2007), The New Grove Guide to Verdi and His Operas, Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Pistone, Danièle (1995), Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera: From Rossini to Puccini, Portland, OR: Amadeus Press. Phillips-Matz,