La Storia di Collezione Szücz

"La Vera Storia di Collezione Szücz" by Giovanni Moser, in Italian, 1908, Edizione Fratelli Fallamberti, Pieve di Cadore, Belluno, Italy, Softcover, 1128 pages, each item fully illustrated.

It is fully accepted by critics and public alike that Józef Szücz is the greatest Baritone ever to step on an opera stage. His voice, ambition and appetite for life are legendary as was the pay he demanded for his shows. Thus his retirement from singing at age 54, at the height o his glorious career, came to everybody as a major shock. He used his time, talent and money to assemble a most astonishing art collection. Signor Moser was a boyhood friend to the great singer and for many years, the curator, agent, accomplice, confidant and author of this catalogue. Far more interesting than the pieces themselves (although they are very professionally described, categorized, evaluated and photographed) are the background facts of their acquisition. It seems that the blazing ambition and stark ruthlessness that brought Szücz success and fame as a singer made him a completely unethical collector. Although the majority of his art was acquired legally at auctions or private sales, if the original owner refused to sell, Szücz and Moser did not shy back from breaking and entering and stealing or robbing. Moser relates with remarkable candor one of several cases when, one morning, after weeks of fruitless negotiation for "Warden in the Sun" by the great Australian landscape painter Clement Shapiro, Szücz came to see Karl Burda, Baron von Blinks, and hit him on the head with a heavy crystal ashtray. While the Baron was bleeding out on the carpet, he simply took the painting off the wall and walked out.

In a cunning (and eventually successful) attempt to protect the collection, the singer's legal team drew up a bulletproof donation undertaking in favour of the town of Békéscsaba where Szücz was born. The city was at that time part of the Hapsburg Empire, as was Lombardia and the city of Brescia, where he had his home. 852 objects were taken to the basement of a castle just outside Békéscsaba never to see the light of day again. We are thankful to Giovanni Moser for the opportunity.