Noted for his rounded timbre and matchless ability to combine a virile singing style with an exceptional degree of gracefulness and vocal refinement, Reszke is generally regarded as being one of the very greatest tenors of all time. It is therefore highly unfortunate that the release of his only two commercial recordings, made in Paris in 1905 for the Fonotipia label, never took place. The matrices and test pressings of these two discs appear to have been destroyed at Reszke's own insistence, after he expressed his disappointment with the results. (Rumours of a record collector possessing a test pressing of one of these records in the 1950s turned out to be false). Only a few Mapleson Cylinders, primitive recordings made privately during actual performances at the Metropolitan Opera in 1901, exist to give us a faint souvenir of him at work. They have been released on CD by the Symposium label, together with transfers of similar cylinders bearing snatches of the voices of other Met artists of the era.