This recording/performance is also available on laser disc and VHS (Sony 48353).

Having admitted to only qualified enthusiasm for Dame Kiri's recent CD albums of popular repertoire and folk-songs, it is a pleasure to recommend this programme of Verdi and Puccini arias without reservation. The beautiful voice has never sounded better and the clear well-balanced recording allows us to hear the expressive pointing of meaning and characterization to perfection. Orchestral sound too is excellent, though slightly set back in relation to the ideally perspectived voice.

-- John Borwick, Gramophone [5/1985]

José Carreras Sings Catalan Songs

...The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra play with tremendous collective virtuosity in the Venusburg music, while the resplendent grandeur of the brass in the Pilgrims' hymn is quite magnificent... The recording, made at the orchestra's home, Heinz Hall, Pittsburgh, is certainly less overwhelming in its effect than the earlier Telarc disc, but if anything, its resourceful stage-management of spatial effects offers much more to interest the ear than mere bombast! This quality is readily apparent with the thrilling entry of the off-stage trumpets as they summon the nobles into the Hall of Song at the Wartburg in readiness for the great contest in Act 2. All the majesty of the playing is brilliantly captured on this recording, and the Pittsburgh orchestra can certainly stand comparison with the great Wagnerian orchestras in the sumptuous Teutonic nobility of their playing. Wolfram's famous aria from the Third Act, "Oh star of Eve", has been recast for solo cello, and the principal player of the Pittsburgh Symphony deserves credit for a liquid and touching evocation of this memorable passage...

-- Gramophone [4/1992]

First Placido Domingo International Voice Competition

Classical Music

A wonderful sampling of Neopolitan songs and operatic arias by one of America's greatest tenors. Includes Pieta, Signore Rossini; Caro Mio Ben Giordani; Gia il Sole dal Gange A. Scarlatti; Occhi Turchini! Denza; Tu lo Sai Torelli, O del Mio Dolce Ardor Gluck, and more. Two classic stereo Columbia LPs, first time on CD!

Performances of The Flying Dutchman stand or fall by the ability of the lead bass-baritone to project the anguished, world-weary yet demonic nature of the accursed seafarer. I was not expecting a definitive reading from James Morris, whose Wotan has often tended towards the bland. But his darkly despairing Monologue is very impressive and comes closer to the superb Fischer-Dieskau (with Konwitschny, available on Berlin Classics) than most recent versions.

-- BBC Music Magazine

All-Star Tenors Salute the World

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Giuseppe Verdi: La Traviata [Highlights]

Verdi: Rigoletto

Classical Music

THE ROYAL EDITION - WAGNER: OR

This is the kind of record that you want to be sent for review as often as possible, to go back to play from the beginning once you've reached the end, to send to any aspiring singer who wants to learn about the first principles of singing. Ileana Cotrubas teaches you anew the importance of legato, of words, of evenly produced tone, of attention to detail, and of how to wed the four together into intelligent interpretations. Indeed each of these performances is at once an example of superb singing qua singing, but at the same time an account of the aria in hand that reveals the character's situation, while encompassing the particular style needed for a particular composer.

Over and above that is Cotrubas's peculiarly individual utterance... It makes her Gilda in Rigoletto touching and vulnerable. Note, too, how the coloratura is here part of the expression of Gilda's joy... The Leonora of Forza del destino finds Cotrubas striking out into new territory, and securely occupying it. Again she has the measure of a character's situation, the cry of "Fatalita" more desperate at each repeat.

-- Gramophone [6/1977, reviewing the Cotrubas selections]

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This is the second of two recitals which mark the welcome return of Renata Scotto to the recording studios. Her strong and touching performance as Ciô-Ciô-Sàn in Barbirolli's Madarna Butterfly (HMV Angel SLS927, 9/67) is now nine years old, and since then she has been rather lost to view by the record-buying public. She was unlucky to come upon the scene at a time when EMI were casting Callas, and Decca Tebaldi, in roles which Scotto might have taken, some of which she did in fact sing for DG in recordings that never quite achieved comparable popularity in this country. Then in the last ten years it has been the fresh, bright tones of Mirella Freni and the velvety ones of Montserrat Caballé that have taken the attention. But all the time Scotto has been giving great pleasure in the opera houses, developing from a singer whose charm and accomplishments were evident when we first heard her, over twenty years ago, into a mature, highly expressive artist of real distinction.

The previous record (CBS 76407, 11/75) presented her in arias of the verismo school, and in these she gave performances sufficiently heartfelt yet nobly restrained to call to mind a great predecessor, Claudia Muzio. This is so again in the present Verdi recital, which contains an intensely moving account of "Addio del passato" from La Traviata, the aria associated most of all with Muzio. The first of the arias from I Vespri Siciliani recalls her also, with its expressive breathing and its slow chromatic scale falling like a sigh. We know from the start of this recital, too, that it is a mature and genuine artist whom we are about to hear, one able to convey the underlying strength of feeling in the lively cabaletta of the extract from La Battaglia di Legnano. With the Nabucco aria it is a new, formidable character that we hear, startlingly vivid as she exclaims with cunning pride how little they know of Abigail's heart. And then, how much we know of Desdemona's when such anxiety overshadows her phrases as in Scotto's performance of the great scene from Otello.

Faults of course there are in this recital, particularly in the rather hard tone of several of the high notes. I still wouldn't be without it!

-- Gramophone [8/1976, reviewing the Scotto selections]

This recording restores a different variety of "period performance" to the catalog. Recorded in mid-1952, the opera is performed in English (in the Martin translation) by most of the cast that gave the premiere of the Met's 1951 production. 'Cosí fan tutte' was thought to be improved most by leaving a lot of it out. Dorabella and Ferrando lose their second act arias as well as the usual omission of the little duet in act I. Aside from the absence of vocal embellishment and the sheer weight of the forces used, the performance is surprisingly close to historically informed performance practice. Tempos are fleet, the recitatives--albeit much abridged--are accompanied by a piano, and the tone is conversational.
The four lovers were cast with big voices that today would be associated with Verdi. Of the women, Eleanor Steber's weighty and beautifully sung Fiordiligi and, in contrast, the quite young Roberta Peters' very pert Despina are the standouts. Richard Tucker as Ferrando is the best of the men, very funny and surprisingly fluent, deploying his golden tone in a role unexpected in light of his fame as a Verdi singer. An interesting window on the history of Mozart performance.

Hans Werner Henze called the opera of Pollicino and Clotide that he wrote in his adopted homeland of Italy, based on the tale of Tom Thumb as told by Collodi, a "fairy tale for music," and dedicated it to the children of Montepulciano. The opera deals with matters of life and death, difficult relationships between parents and children, poverty and hunger, staying in and being freed from inhuman conditions. The little hero, Pollicino (Italian: "little thumb"), and his six brothers who have to seek for shelter in the house of Orco, the maneater (whose daughters are Clotilde and her six sisters), because poverty drove them away from home, have to go through several adventures before they all together manage to turn their fate for the better. First recording with extensive booklet and German-English libretto.

Classical Music

Berg: Wozzeck, Op. 7 (Sung in Italian) & Violin Concerto

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