Life — October 18, 1917 — page 3: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "The Quartet from Rigoletto" This is primarily an **advertisement**, not satire. It promotes Thomas A. Edison's phonograph technology by claiming the New Edison can "Re-Create" performances with such fidelity that listeners cannot distinguish recorded voices from live singers. The ad features four performers (identified as Ciccolini, Alcock, Verlet, and Middleton) performing the famous quartet from Verdi's opera *Rigoletto*. Edison's marketing pitch emphasizes that the phonograph reproduces music "with absolute realism"—so convincingly that direct comparison between live and recorded performances proves the technology's superiority. The tagline "The Phonograph with a Soul" positions Edison's device as capturing not mere mechanical sound, but genuine artistic expression. This represents early 1920s advertising rhetoric celebrating technological advancement.