The House of Victrola (La Casa de la Victrola), a new cultural project in the city of Holguín, has the impact of offering a collection of mechanical and acoustic sound recorders and reproducers created during the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the following as a permanent sample century.
There, visitors can find 14 original pieces, including an Edison phonograph model c (1898), a Victor 1 gramophone (1905) and an Amberola Edison model 30 (1912), manufactured in New Jersey, United States. All work thanks to the meticulous, qualified and constant research work of Jorge Luis Betancourt Sánchez, a violinist by profession and passionate lover of history and archeology, to which he joins the exhaustive knowledge of restoration techniques.
The interest in the victrolas was accentuated in him from 2011 and since then he has spared no time or own financial resources when moving to any place in the province of Holguin or outside it, after teams that retain their structure or isolated mechanisms, found almost always in deplorable state.
This site, located near Calixto García Park and emerged with the support of the highest political authorities and the government of Holguín, is not conceived without constant interaction with the public, hence the visitor has the possibility to listen to any of the more than a thousand albums collected by Jorge Luis Betancourt, many of them with the best symphonic music of the last century and original recordings of the famous Italian tenor Enrico Caruso and celebrities of the national pentagram such as Ernesto Lecuona and Rita Montaner.
According to Jorge Luis Betancourt, for the students of Lyric Art in Holguín a special space is opened, because together with their professors they will be able to attend auditions in which they will appreciate the nuances with which great orchestra conductors or famous singers interpreted their creations. The practical utility of the project is so palpable, he says, that the students of the specialty of Sound of the provincial branch of the Higher Institute of Art can know primitive devices such as phonographs and amperolas that work with rubber pipes manufactured before the appearance of the flat records or acetate discs.
Taken from Granma Digital
By Germán Veloz Placencia
