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]