Search - Top 20 Opera Scenes & Arias :: Top 20 Opera Scenes & Arias

The transfers project voices and orchestras boldly.

John Austin | Kangaroo Ground, Australia | 06/27/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Nobody would deny that the scenes and arias here are amongst opera's "top twenty". A few might be surprised to find that three of them are not sung in their original language, however, and others might wish that renditions by different artist had been chosen. To sing Butterfly's "Un bel di", surely Göta Ljungberg's 1929 version, sung in German, is an odd choice. Apart from slight gripes like this, I have nothing but praise for this compilation, which uses recordings made between 1909 and 1941. The earliest is of Caruso singing in remarkably good French the "Carmen" tenor aria. Voices and orchestras are projected boldly in these transfers, as you'll hear if you sample the first couple of tracks. Collectors of recordings by singers of the past will find items here that have been reissued umpteen times (Tibbett's "Toreador Song", for example), together with several that are rare. Amongst the latter is Alessandro Valente's 1927 "Nessun dorma". This singer, whose career in opera was negligible, may have been the first tenor to record the unauthorised version of the aria with the long held penultimate note - a version that audiences have wanted tenors to sing ever since."