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Premiered in Rome on January 14, 1900, <Tosca>, one of Puccini’s three most famous works, is set in the Napoleonic era following the French Revolution. The opera is set in Rome, Italy, which was under the control of the Austrian Empire at the time. The protagonist, the painter Cavaradossi, fights for his country’s independence but is imprisoned by Baron Scarpia, the head of Rome’s secret police, for harboring the political fugitive Angelotti. On his deathbed, Cavaradossi writes a farewell letter to his beloved Tosca and sings the famous aria <E lucevan le stele>.

<Ssukdaemeori> is a song in the pansori <Chunhyangga>. Chunhyang has been flogged mercilessly, and her hair has come undone. With unkempt hair, she sings this sorrowful and yearning song in her cold prison cell, thinking about her love Mong-ryong in Hanyang. Changgeuk as a genre became popular during the Japanese Forced Occupation period with the emergence of theaters like Hyeomyulsa and Gwangmudae, and as the gramophone began to be distributed to the general public in the 1920s and the 30s, the album containing the song <Ssukdaemeori>, sang by the master singer Lim Bang-ul (1904-1961), became one of the most popular in the period. The song’s yearning was interpreted beyond the yearning for one’s lover to encompass the yearning for the lost nation and independence. The Chunhyangjeon Collection, issued by Victor Records in 1935, is said to be one of the three greatest pansori albums of Korea.

Though they may come from different lands and were created according to different traditions and techniques, the aria <E lucevan le stele>, sung a hundred years ago in Italy, and the pansori song <Ssukdaemeori>, sung in colonial Joseon, share the common sentimentalities that transcend and weave through the ages.

A joint exhibition between the National Gugak Center and the National Asian Culture Center

The phonograph cylinder, invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison, was originally not intended for listening music. It only became the foundation of today’s music industry when Emile Berliner developed the gramophone from design in 1888.

This exhibition features the <Joseon Aak>, the first record of Joseon’s court music made a hundred years ago. The fact that Victor Records, a global music record company at the time, created the <Joseon Aak> and paid for the recording is thought to be a recognition of the value of the Joseon court music as the epitome of ancient Eastern music and its four thousand–year history.

Another part of the album is the pansori album <Chunhyangjeon>, a popular album in the 1920s and the 30s. This year is in fact the 120th anniversary of master singer Lim Bang-ul’s birth, the master of gyemyeon melody and the one whose voice is featured in this album. The exhibition shows how the young and petite Lim Bang-ul embodied the tragic history of Korea in his song.

With the emergence of the music album business, many master singers left their presence in the history of Korean music, such as Song Man-gap, Lee Dong-baek, Kim Chang-ryong, Jeong Jeong-ryeol, Lee Hwa-jung-seon, Lim Bang-ul, and Park Nok-ju. Although their names are slowly being forgotten, the records in this exhibition offer us a valuable opportunity to trace the roots of the Korean musical tradition beyond the genre of gugak (traditional Korean music).