There is something decidedly familiar about this compilation.
Similar programs with lollipops from popular operas have been
issued over and over again by the big companies which have riches
aplenty in their archives. And there is nothing wrong with that,
since there seems to be a market for it. I do hope though that
some of the buyers will become interested enough to search out
what else there is by that particular composer or from that
particular opera - maybe end up buying some complete recordings.
The choices here are certainly, most of them anyway, of such
interpretative quality that they make tempting tasters.
The most frequently
heard singer is Joan Sutherland, who appears in six duets,
three of them together with Marilyn Horne. These are justly
famous recordings from the 1960s when Sutherland’s voice was
at its most beautiful and free from the hollowness and beat
in the voice that started to creep in towards the end of the
1970s. Anyone sampling the virtuoso Semiramide duet,
or the wonderfully vocalized Recordare from Verdi’s
Messa da Requiem, culled from Solti’s first recording,
or even more alluring, the duet from Norma, will find
readings that are hard to surpass. It’s true that Sutherland’s
consonants are sketchy, but who really cares when everything
is produced with such golden tone. The two French items that
open the program are also marvellous, and especially in the
Lakmé duet Sutherland and Jane Berbié blend so well.
The only questionable item is the Rodelinda duet, surely
the least familiar number here. It was recorded when Sutherland
was approaching sixty and the voice isn’t as steady as it
is in the other duets.
Golden singing
is also to be heard in the little evening prayer from Hänsel
und Gretel, where Lucia Popp and Brigitte Fassbaender
are lovely twins; April Cantelo and Helen Watts are wonderful
in the magical duet scene from Beatrice et Bénédict
and Françoise Pollet and Hélène Perraguin make the most of
Didon’s and Anna’s duet from Les Troyens. Qui tollis
from Rossini’s Messe solennelle isn’t very solemn but
it is well sung, and Renata Tebaldi and the young Fiorenza
Cossotto offer grandiose Italianate singing in the flower
duet from Madama Butterfly, so well known, obviously,
that the track-list doesn’t even mention from which opera
it comes.
The presentation
of the rose from Der Rosenkavalier is worth a special
comment, since this is the only number not culled from a complete
set. Decca recorded the opera complete in 1969 in Vienna with
Georg Solti conducting and with Régine Crespin singing the
Feldmarschallin. But five years before that they had made
a single LP with highlights from the opera, also with Crespin,
and with Hilde Güden a delectable Sophie, singing opposite
Elisabeth Söderström’s youthful Octavian. It is a pity they
didn’t record this trio complete, since Crespin, good though
she is on the Solti set, was even better in 1964. It could
be mentioned that Ms Söderström during her career sang all
three female roles in this opera – and very successfully at
that. Her Feldmarschallin, which I saw in Stockholm in the
early 1970s, was definitely in the same league as that of
Schwarzkopf and Crespin.
Jaded collectors
are likely to have many of these items on their shelves already,
but those who haven’t and feel tempted by the contents here,
need not hesitate. Decca’s recordings during this period were
always state-of-the-art.
Göran Forsling
Joan Sutherland
(soprano); Jane Berbié (mezzo); L’Orchestre National de l’Opéra
de Monte-Carlo/Richard Bonynge 
