Search - Salvatore Cottone, Pietro Mascagni, Paolo Francesco Tosti :: The Legendary Caruso

This collection begins at the dawn of Enrico Caruso's recording career: in 1902, only four years after his breakthrough success at La Scala. Caruso's voice rings out magnificently over the primitive recording technology in a collection of Italian arias from Aida, Tosca, La Gioconda, Manon, and The Pearl Fishers that have become warhorses in our age but were so new in Caruso's time that the singer is occasionally accompanied on piano by the composer. So there's an authentic-performance value in this as well as the sheer pleasure of that famous tenor voice, which maintains its brilliant virility even when Caruso ascends into head voice for the final high pianissimo that ends "Celeste Aida." Even the upper regions of "Mi par d'udir ancor" from The Pearl Fishers have a fluid musicality that so many modern recordings lack. EMI's transfers are a bit overly filtered; there's more noise in RCA's Complete Caruso but also more voice. --David Patrick Stearns