Disc: 1
1. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 1: 'Ah! Cercalo, cercalo!'
2. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 1: 'Grazie, comari'
3. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 1: 'Ferma! Ferma!'
4. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 1: 'Piango sulla tua tomba!'
5. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 1: 'Dicon che a far denari'
6. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 1: 'Serenata delle fate'
7. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 1: 'Ah! voi cantate meglio delle fate'
8. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 1: 'Lodoletta'
9. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 1: 'A voi, bambini'
10. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 1: 'Antonio'
11. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 1: 'Povero Antonio'
12. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 1: 'No, comari'
13. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 1: 'È qui'
14. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 2: 'Oggi sarai finita'
15. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 2: 'All'alba di Novembre'
16. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 2: 'Bu! Bu! Bu Malandrini'

Disc: 2
1. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 2: 'Che mattinata grigia'
2. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 2: 'Ah! Signor Flammen!'
3. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 2: 'Perchè? Perchè? Vanard!'
4. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 2: 'Nessuno! Respiro!'
5. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 3: 'L'anno muore'
6. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 3: 'Ah! lasciami!'
7. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 3: 'No! No! Non è più Flammen'
8. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 3: 'Ah! Il suo nome!'
9. Lodoletta, opera in 3 acts: Act 3: 'E quando mezzanotte scocca'

Zsuzsanna Bazsinka (Soprano)
Andrea Ulbrich (Alto)
Jolán Sánta (Mezzo Soprano),
Péter Kelen (Tenor)
Milhály Kálmándi (Baritone)
Karoly Szilági (Baritone),
Maria Spacagna (Soprano)
László Polgár (Bass)
András Laczó (Tenor)
József Mukk (Tenor)

Hungarian Radio TV Chorus
Hungarian State Orchestra
Hungarian State Opera Chorus
Charles Rosekranz – conductor

With a libretto by Giovacchino Forzano, Mascagni's Lodoletta is through-composed with very few sections that break out of the overall score, aside from a children's serenade, Giannotto's big aria, and a waltz. Mascagni ties things together with recurring melodic fragments, although these do not amount to full-fledged leitmotivs in the Wagnerian sense. Indeed, there are precious few big "tunes" here, although there is an overall sense of melody.

As the opera begins, Dutch villagers (most of the characters have been given Italian names) prepare to celebrate the birthday of a local girl named Lodoletta. Alas, Lodoletta's foster father, Antonio, can't afford to buy the wooden clogs he wants to give her. At this point a group of French political exiles shows up, including a painter named Flammen. He negotiates with Antonio to buy a picture of the Holy Virgin that belongs to Lodoletta (at this point, the exchanges are melodic recitative rather than real duets), but Antonio refuses to sell, so Flammen "rents" the picture to make a copy. Midway through the celebration, Antonio falls from a tree and dies. Lodoletta is orphaned and Flammen, hoping to atone for his debauched life in Paris, takes the girl into his care in his consoling "Song of the Flowers."

In Act II, Lodoletta is falling in love with Flammen while being pursued by a villager named Giannotto (who had a particularly lyrical number in the previous act, and who delivers a fuller, even more ardent aria here). But Giannotto is a baritone and has no hope of winning the heroine's favor. Meanwhile, Flammen is suffering from the villagers' xenophobia, so when Napoleon III grants amnesty to all French exiles, Flammen decides, after some soul-searching, to return to Paris, particularly when Lodoletta urges him to go, fearing that she'll be gossiped about as his mistress.

Act III finds Flammen in his Paris villa, celebrating New Year's Eve in the company of friends, including a great many women. His friends mock his sadness as he wonders what has become of Lodoletta back in Holland. One friend he'd sent back to inquire about her reported that she had disappeared, but others insist that she has run off with some new suitor. Actually, Lodoletta is just now arriving at Flammen's doorstep after a long, exhausting journey, but she feels unworthy to enter the painter's festive house and collapses. At length, in a dramatic verismo aria, Flammen discovers Lodoletta, dead in the snow. ---James Reel, Rovi

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1. Cavalleria Rusticana: Preludio 1 	2:37 	
2. Cavalleria Rusticana: "O Lola ch'hai di latti la cammisa" 	2:36 	
3. Cavalleria Rusticana: Preludio 2 	3:30 	
4. Cavalleria Rusticana: "Gli aranci olezzano" 	8:35 	
5. Cavalleria Rusticana: "Dite, Mamma Lucia" 	5:06 	
6. Cavalleria Rusticana: "Il cavallo scalpita" 	2:40 	
7. Cavalleria Rusticana: "Beato voi, compar Alfio" 	0:58 	
8. Cavalleria Rusticana: "Regina Coeli, laetare; Alleluja!" 	2:34 	
9. Cavalleria Rusticana: "Inneggiamo, il Signor non è morto" 	4:26 	
10. Cavalleria Rusticana: "Voi lo sapete, o mamma" 	6:13 	
11. Cavalleria Rusticana: "Tu qui, Santuzza?" 	3:48 	
12. Cavalleria Rusticana: "Fior di giaggiolo" 	3:12 	
13. Cavalleria Rusticana: "Ah! Lo vedi, che hai tu detto?" 	0:39 	
14. Cavalleria Rusticana: "No, no, Turiddu, rimani, rimani" 	5:29 	
15. Cavalleria Rusticana: "Oh! Il Signore vi manda, compar Alfio" 	5:31 	
16. Cavalleria Rusticana: Intermezzo 	4:04 	
17. Cavalleria Rusticana: "A casa, a casa, amici" 	2:58 	
18. Cavalleria Rusticana: "Viva il vino spumeggiante" 	2:47 	
19. Cavalleria Rusticana: "A voi tutti, salute!" 	5:10 	
20. Cavalleria Rusticana: "Mamma, quel vino è generoso" 	5:46

Santuzza - Maria Callas
Turiddu - Giuseppe di Stefano
Alfio - Rolando Panerai
Lola - Anna Maria Canali
Mamma Lucia - Ebe Ticozzi

Orchestra e Coro del Teatro alla Scala di Milano 
Tullio Serafin – conductor

Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana was the third complete opera recording for EMI [Columbia/Angel] that Callas took part in, and the second under the aegis of La Scala, Milan. Sessions took place at the beginning of August 1953 at the Basilica of Santa Euphemia, the theatre being shut in the summer. The recording was first published in April 1954. Like others she had already made, La Gioconda [Cetra], Lucia di Lammermoor [EMI] and Elvira in I Puritani [EMI], Santuzza she sang in the theatre, although she had not done so since her Athens days before World War II, when she made her first appearance on stage in the rôle at the age of fourteen in 1938. In the 1954/5 La Scala Season it was announced that she would do so again, under Leonard Bernstein, but in fact she did not, nor would she ever undertake it again.

Although Boito’s Mefistofele [1868] and Ponchielli’s La Gioconda [1876] (with libretto by Boito), contain some ingredients of verismo, Cavalleria rusticana, a one act work first given at the Costanzi, Rome in 1890, was archetypal of the new style. A swift moving passionate tale of betrayal and revenge it remained for the next century, with its twin, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci [1892], one of the most popular operas. Santuzza was created by Gemma Bellincioni [1864-1950], whose repertory in her youth included Lucia and Elvira in I Puritani and later Giordano’s Fedora and even Strauss’s Salome, the variety of which suggests she had something in common with Callas. Although photographs of her in the Dance of the Seven Veils testify to her terpsichorean skill, her voice, records leave little doubt, was nothing remarkable. She was a noted dramatic soprano, but the term did not then refer, as it does today, to the size of a voice, rather to her histrionic prowess.

In the course of time, as the verismo style became more popular, reputable Santuzzas, with the increasingly intemperate playing of the orchestra, became increasingly concerned with the production of more powerful voices and more telling chest registers. Noted exponents included sopranos like Giannina Arangi-Lombardi [1891-1951], Giuseppina Cobelli [1898-1948], Iva Pacetti [1898-1981] and Lina Bruna Rasa [1907-1995], and mezzos like Ebe Stignani [1903- 1974], Giulietta Simionato [born 1910] and Fiorenza Cossotto [born 1935]. Although there is in Callas’s deployment of her registers something of their style; at the beginning, for example, as Santuzza laments to Mamma Lucia her being excommunicated, ‘sono scomunicata’, the first six of the seven syllables are all set on middle E; in these she uses chest voice, then gradually, as she lightens the tone, and the tessitura rises to top A, she is able to shift almost imperceptibly into middle voice, and does not have to indulge in crashing gears and those obtrusive register breaks so beloved of many Santuzzas.

She sings the aria Voi lo sapete, in which Santuzza tells her tearful tale of how Turiddu has deserted her for Lola, Alfio’s wife, in verismo style imbuing it with a characteristic vocal plangency; but she does not forget it is the singer’s business to indulge her listeners, and not herself. In so doing she renders the aria with such exactitude and precision that she makes it, one could say, almost classical. Towards the end of the first part there is an impeccably attacked fortissimo high A, and then the same perfection in her delivery of the piano F sharp at the beginning of the phrase ‘Priva dell’onor mio’. Her effects are never at the expense of the music. On the G, on the word ‘piango’ [I weep], she contrives a lachrymose effect not by gasping or by an uneasy selfindulgent lurch in the line, but by making an almost acciacatura from the register break an octave below. On all her records there is her musical accuracy to admire.

The only surviving films of Callas, as Tosca in Act II (at the Met, New York [1956], the Paris Opéra [1958] and Covent Garden, London [1964], show through the years, notwithstanding declining vocal resources, how her Tosca became increasingly more assured, an assumption – nevertheless were these the only souvenirs of her we possessed, how little of her art would have survived! There have been many great Toscas, too many to list here, but only one Callas. Like Caruso and Chaliapin, whose recordings testify to their greatness, her art had no precedent; she was not the consummation of tradition, but something new and different that suddenly appeared, breaking all the rules. Now she has been dead more than a quarter of a century and her stage career over more than forty years, yet there are more of her records available today than there have ever been.

Giuseppe Di Stefano, born in 1921 near Catania, Sicily, had a brilliant but short career. His was one of the most beautiful lyric tenor voices of the last century. He began singing light music then, following a brief period of study with the baritone Luigi Montesanto, made his opera début in 1946 as Des Grieux in Massenet’s Manon at Reggio Emilia, after which his rise to fame was rapid. In 1947 he appeared at La Scala, Milan, also as Des Grieux, and in 1948 at the Metropolitan, New York, as the Duke in Rigoletto. At first his repertory included Fenton in Falstaff, Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi, Alfredo in La traviata and Faust, but it did not take long before he began undertaking heavier rôles, such as Cavaradossi, Don José in Carmen, Radames in Aida, Canio in Pagliacci and even Alvaro in La forza del destino. Sadly the great years of his career were soon over, and by 1961, trying to make more out of his voice than nature had put in, he made his last appearance at La Scala. From 1944 for HMV he recorded songs and arias, and from 1953 for Angel/Columbia, with Callas, Edgardo, Arturo, Cavaradossi, Turiddu in Cavalleria rusticana, Canio, the Duke, Manrico in Il trovatore, Rodolfo, Riccardo in Un ballo in maschera and Des Grieux in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut.

The baritone Rolando Panerai [b.1924], born at Campi Bisenzio near Florence, had a long and distinguished career. After completing his studies in Florence and Milan, with Armani and Tess, he made his debut at the Comunale, Florence in 1946 as Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor. Thereafter his progress was rapid and extensive: in 1947 he appeared at the San Carlo, Naples; 1952 at La Scala, Milan; 1957 at the Salzburg Festival; 1958 at San Francisco and 1960 at Covent Garden, London. He sang elsewhere throughout Italy, and in Austria, Germany and France. His substantial repertory included Apollo in Gluck’s Alceste, the High Priest in Samson e Dalila, Mozart’s and Rossini’s Figaro, Masetto in Don Giovanni, Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, Paolo in Simon Boccanegra, Marcello in La Bohème, di Luna in Il Trovatore, Silvio, Germont in La Traviata and in 1962 at La Scala he created the title rôle in Turchi’s Il buon soldato Svejk. Later in his career, in traditional fashion, he graduated from Ford to Falstaff and undertook Don Pasquale and Dulcamara in L’elisir d’amore. In a 1950 RAI broadcast he is Amfortas in Parsifal with Callas’s Kundry and, nearly half a century later, Germont in a telecast of Traviata conducted by Mehta. His voice was an attractive sounding but lyric instrument. For EMI [Columbia/Angel] with Callas, as well as Alfio, he recorded Silvio, di Luna and Marcello.

Tullio Serafin (1878-1968), born at Rottanova di Cavarzere, near Venice, was one of the great conductors of Italian opera. After studying at the Milan Conservatory at first he was a violinist in the orchestra at La Scala, Milan, then in 1900 at Ferrara began a career as conductor. Engagements followed in Turin and Rome. Through more than half a century he appeared at Covent Garden, London (1907, 1931, 1959- 60), La Scala, Milan (1910-1914, 1917, 1918, 1940, 1946-7), Colón, Buenos Aires (1914, 1919, 1920, 1928, 1937, 1938, 1949, 1951), San Carlo, Naples (1922-3, 1940-1, 1949-58), Metropolitan, New York (1924-34), the Rome Opera (1934-43, 1962), Lyric Opera, Chicago (1955, 1957-58), and numerous other opera houses in Italy and abroad. His repertory was vast. He conducted conventional and unconventional operas as well as introducing a variety of new works and worked with numerous famous singers, including Battistini, Chaliapin, Ponselle, Gigli, Callas and Sutherland. His recording career was exhaustive and embraced the HMV (1939) Verdi Requiem as well as both EMI [Columbia/Angel] Normas [1954 and 1960] with Callas. ---Michael Scott, naxos.com

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Disc 1
1 	Act 1. Introduktion	11:15 		
2 	Act 1. Ho fatto un triste sogno pauroso	05:12 	
3 	Act 1. È lei! è lei!	01:53 	
4 	Act 1. Voglio posure ove à più caldo il sole!	01:30 
5 	Act 1. Al rio! al rio! È il plenilunio! Al rio!	04:12 
6 	Act 1. I pure stille, gaie scintilla, Scende la vita!	04:10 
7 	Act 1. Giù per la via ne viene un gaio suono	01:26 	
8 	Act 1. Io son Danjuro il padre dei Fantocci	02:04 	
9 	Act 1. Misera! Ognor qui sola!	04:30 	 	
10 	Act 1. Ah! la istoria pietosa!	01:14 	
11 	Act 1. Apri la tua finestra	02:44 	
12 	Act 1. É questa poesia gran ciurmatrice	02:29 	
13 	Act 1. Danze per la morte di Dhia: La Bellezza, la Morte, il Vampiro	03:49 	
14 	Act 1. Grazie, Mousmé! A rivederci! Musica!	00:23 	
15 	Act 1. Questo dramma è menzogna... tutto, tutto	08:05 	
16 	Act 2. La che ci fate ancora mascherate?	10:05 

Disc 2 
1 	Act 2. Ognora sogni, sogni e sogni	07:47 	
2 	Act 2. Io pingo... pingo, ma il mio pennilo invano stendo, intengo!	04:20 	
3 	Act 2. A un cenno mio manda le vesti e i doni	07:39 
4 	Act 2. Un di (ero piccina) al tempio vidi un bonzo	04:26 
5 	Act 2. Son le folle dei bonzi spavaldi e I	04:47 
6 	Act 2. Voglio il giardino mio!		02:13 	
7 	Act 2. Colle piccine, gran maestra natural	03:03 	
8 	Act 2. Annota! La gente dotta e ghiotta	03:15 	
9 	Act 2. Oh, maraviglia dei maraviglia!	07:09 	
10 	Act 3. Ad ora bruna e tarda	12:40 	
11 	Act 3. Perché?... Perché?	00:51 	
12 	Act 3. Ognun per suo cammino	01:22 	
13 	Act 3. Rubai, fui bastonato	01:16 	
14 	Act 3. Ahimè! Chi allumerà	01:16 	
15 	Act 3. Ancora! Il triste sogno pauroso!	10:21 	

Iris - Magda Olivero  (Soprano)
Osaka - Luigi Ottolini  (Tenor)
Kyoto - Renato Capecchi  (Baritone)
II Cieco - Plinio Clabassi  (Bass)
Dhia - Jennie Veeninga
Un Merciaivolo - Fred Bongers
Un Cenciaivlo - Fred Bongers

Omroep Orchestra,  Omroep Chorus
Conductor - Fulvio Vernizzi 

This is the opera in which Mascagni tried desperately to do everything in an attempt to prove that he wasn’t a no-talent one-hit wonder living off the royalties from The Little One-Act Opera That Could: a crypt-like opening prelude contrasted with a massively explosive choral hymn (I will say more about that soon!), a Japanese girl (daughter of a blind old man) who is kidnapped by a psychotic admirer and forced into a brothel only for her to throw herself into a sewer (you heard that right), followed by a whole-tone prelude for the third act and a repeat of the massively explosive choral hymn from the beginning as she dies in the sewer. So, what could possibly go wrong? Well, if you ever wondered what the D.W. Griffith 1919 film Broken Blossoms starring Lillian Gish would look like set in Japan and involving a sewer shaft, this is essentially it except that the plot is meant to be more symbolistic than realistic. Actually this opera was successful, for a while, and is now considered to be among the top three Mascagni operas. It is not so infrequently compared to Madama Butterfly although to be honest the music sounds closer to Turandot if comparisons to a Puccini opera are to be made. Perhaps the connection to Butterfly in ones mind is because of the shared Japanese setting.

SETTING: Japan, 19th century. This has got to be one of the most depressingly sad plots in all opera: Iris (soprano), a young and innocent girl who loves nature (particularly the sun), is kidnapped during a puppet show by a rogue admirer named Osaka (tenor) and Kyoto (baritone) the keeper of a Geisha house at Yoshiwara (which are misidentified in the opera, and most of western culture, as being brothels which they are NOT!). Kyoto leaves money and a note for her blind old father (bass) cruelly implying that she has deserted him to become a prostitute. At the geisha house Osaka fails to seduce the innocent Iris and abandons her. Kyoto decides to try to market her but her father shows up and rebukes her, throwing mud at her. She then rushes back into the house and throws herself down a shaft into the sewer below where she dies the next morning. ---philsoperaworld.music.blog

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1. Mascagni: Preludio - Preludio	Philharmonia Orchestra		2:26	
2. Mascagni: "O lola ch'ai di latti la cammisa" (Siciliana) - "O lola ch'ai di latti la cammisa" (Siciliana)	Plácido Domingo	2:04	
3. Mascagni: Siciliana (Inst.) - Tempo I - Siciliana (Inst.) - Tempo I   Philharmonia Orchestra  3:14
4. Mascagni: Introduzione - Coro d'introduzione - Allegro giocoso - Introduzione - Coro d'introduzione - Allegro giocoso	Philharmonia Orchestra		2:39	
5. Mascagni: "Gli aranci olezzano sui verdi margini" - Gli aranci olezzano sui verdi margini	Philharmonia Orchestra		5:09
6. Mascagni: Scena - Largo - Scena - Largo	Philharmonia Orchestra		2:19	
7. Mascagni: "Dite, mamma Lucia" - "Dite, mamma Lucia"	Agnes Baltsa	3:38	
8. Mascagni: "Il cavallo scalpita" - Il cavallo scalpita	Juan Pons	2:18
9. Mascagni: "Beato voi, compar Alfio" - "Beato voi, compar Alfio"	Vera Baniewicz		1:01
10. Mascagni: "Regina coeli, laetare" - Regina coeli laetare	Philharmonia Orchestra		2:37
11. Mascagni: "Inneggiamo, il Signor non è morto" (Easter Hymn) - "Inneggiamo, il Signor non è morto" (Preghiera)	Agnes Baltsa	4:42	
12. Mascagni: "Voi lo sapete, o mama" (Romanza) - "Voi lo sapete, o mama" (Romanza)	Agnes Baltsa	6:09
13. Mascagni: Tu qui, Santuzza? - Tu qui, Santuzza?	Agnes Baltsa	3:30	
14. Mascagni: "Fior di giaggiolo" - Fior di giaggiolo	Susanne Mentzer	3:25	
15. Mascagni: "Ah! lo vedi, che hai tu detto?" - "Ah! lo vedi" (Duetto)	Agnes Baltsa	5:55	
16. Mascagni: "Oh! Il Signore vi manda" (Duetto) - "Oh! Il Signore vi manda" (Duetto)	Agnes Baltsa	3:58
17. Mascagni: Comare Santa - Comare Santa	Agnes Baltsa	1:44
18. Mascagni: Intermezzo sinfonico - Intermezzo sinfonico	Philharmonia Orchestra		4:16
19. Mascagni: A casa, a casa - A casa, a casa	Susanne Mentzer	2:55	
20. Mascagni: "Viva il vino spumeggiante" (Brindisi) - "Viva il vino spumeggiante" (Brindisi)	Susanne Mentzer	2:35	
21. Mascagni: "A voi tutti salute!" - A voi tutti salute	Philharmonia Orchestra		5:31	
22. Mascagni: "Mamma, quel vino è generoso" - "Mamma, quel vino è generoso"	Vera Baniewicz	5:49

Placido Domingo (Tenor)
Juan Pons (Baritone)
Susanne Mentzer (Mezzo Soprano)
Agnes Baltsa (Mezzo Soprano)
Wiera Baniewicz (Alto)
Philharmonia Orchestra & Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Giuseppe Sinopoli - conductor

This recording is just amazing. Domingo is incredible everytime he makes a sound, but specially in his "O Lola" and in his "Mamma, quel vino é generoso". Every part of the chorus is just amazing, specially when they sing the brindis with Turiddu "Viva il vino spumeggiante". Baltsa is also very good and she makes a perfect alongside Domingo. Pons, althoguh Alfio doesn't have that much vocal appearance, is great(to hear Pons well listen to him in La Traviata). The orchestra and Sinopoli do a great job and they put a lot of emotion into the music. I highly recommend this Cavalleria. --- Víctor Hanzlík Valentín, amazon.com

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CD1
1 	Preludietto	3:33 	
2 	Act 1. Ma questa e una pazzia!	4:57 	
3 	Act 1. Son pochi fiori	3:31 	
4 	Act 1. Orsu, vieni tra noi, al fianco mio	1:46 	
5 	Act 1. Chi mai sara?	4:01 	
6 	Act 1. Laceri, miseri, tanti bambini	2:50 	
7 	Act 1. Viva lo zingaro!	1:36 	
8 	Act 1. Per voi, ghiottoni inutili	1:08 	
9 	Act 1. Il suo sermone e splendido!	0:38 	
10 	Act 1. Son gli orfanelli	2:13 	
11 	Act 2. Ah! le belle ciliege!	6:07 	
12 	Act 2. Bel cavalier, che vai per la foresta	2:08 	
13 	Act 2. Suzel, buon di!	4:11 	
14 	Act 2. Tutto tace	4:25 	
15 	Act 2. Oh! chi e che giunge?	2:19 	
16 	Act 2. Vediamo un po'!	2:59 	
17 	Act 2. Faceasi vecchio Abramo	6:11 	
18 	Act 2. Come va?	2:11 	
19 	Act 2. Quale strano turbamento	1:19 	
20 	Act 2. Fritz, noi partiamo. Addio!	0:43 	
21 	Act 2. Che piu s'aspetta?	3:31 	

CD2 	
1 	Intermezzo	3:59 	
2 	Act 3. Tutto ho tentato		3:11 	
3 	Act 3. Buon giorno, Fritz!	1:25 	
4 	Act 3. O pallida, che un giorno mi guardasti	2:50 	
5 	Act 3. O amore, o bella luce del core	2:29 	
6 	Act 3. L'amico Fritz fantastica d'amore!		1:42 	
7 	Act 3. Povero Fritz, l'amore in te si desta	1:20 		
8 	Act 3. Non mi resta che il pianto ed il dolore	2:45 	
9 	Act 3. Come s'e fatta pallida!	1:37 	
10 	Act 3. Ah! ditela per me quella parola	6:11 	
11 	Act 3. Amici, ho vinto, ho vinto!		0:47 	
12 	Act 3. Tu sposi, Fritz?	2:06

Suzel........................... Mirella Freni
Fritz Kobus..................... Luciano Pavarotti
Beppe........................... Laura Didier Gambardella
David........................... Vincenzo Sardinero
Hanezň.......................... Benito di Bella
Federico........................ Luigi Pontiggia
Caterina........................ Malvina Major

Coro e Orchestra of the Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden - Gianandrea Gavazzeni

The score is consistently charming, elegiac, unassuming and well made. Any enterprising opera lover should own this pleasing work, when it is so charmingly performed.

This was one of the first sets I reviewed for GRAMOPHONE. Listening to it again, I found my pleasure in the work and admiration for its performance even further enhanced, so that Shaw's dictum that it is an opera which will "pass the evening pleasantly enough for you but which you need not regret missing if you happen to have business elsewhere" seems all that more unkind. When given as lovingly as it is here it has its own validity; the score consistently charming, elegiac, unassuming and well made, as I commented back in 1969, and these are qualities to be cherished in an age that has tended to overlook or ignore them in its own contributions to the genre.

What makes the reading so recommendable now is that one is very unlikely to hear the work today in the theatre and even less likely to hear it sung with such affection. At the point in their careers when Freni sang Suzel and Pavarotti Fritz, they were ideally suited to these roles. From her opening solo, through her ballad, the inspired Cherry Duet to her Third Act solo of sorrow, Freni sings with such warmth of tone and expression as to melt any heart doubting the worth of the music. She sounds at once vulnerable and wistful throughout. Pavarotti strikes just the right note of eager ardour as he gradually falls in Love with Suzel after averring that he is impervious to the emotion. He shades his part with elegiac accent and winning pianissimos. These Modenese neighbours obviously enjoyed singing together, and their contributions, not least their Third Act duet where they fall into each other's arms, alone make the recording worthwhile. But there are also Vincenzo Sardinero's firm, vibrant tones to turn the role of the matchmaking rabbi David into something positive and Gavazzeni's affectionate way with the orchestra to indicate Mascagni's care over instrumentation.

I am less happy, as before, with the blustery Beppe, a too fulsome mezzo for a travesti part. But as a whole the pastoral-passionate mood of the piece is wonderfully caught—and recorded: I wish producers today could imitate this kind of natural, forward sound. Only the range of the orchestra shows the age of the recording—but that may have something to do with the dry tone of the Covent Garden strings. Any enterprising opera lover should own this pleasing work, when it is so charmingly done. -- Gramophone [8/1987]

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