The Classic Puccini Recordings: Renata Tebaldi, soprano, with other singers; Orchestra and Chorus of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome; Alberto Erede, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli and Franco Capuana, conductors (Decca, 12 CDs)
The re-release of six mono recordings of Renata Tebaldi in her signature Puccini roles will have fans of the great Italian soprano singing like canaries. Recorded between 1951 and 1959, when she was at the height of her vocal powers, these half-dozen complete opera performances convey an artistic brilliance and musical passion that leap across the decades. She makes a spirited Manon Lescaut, a passionate Mimi, a riveting Tosca, a thrilling Minnie and a touching Liu. There are, to be sure, moments when, even at this early stage of her career, Tebaldi hits her vocal ceiling (she never did have a limitless top range); yet she is amazingly secure throughout, and often simply luscious on purely vocal terms.Her colleagues include most of the stalwarts of Decca’s vocal stable from the ’50s, estimable singers such as Mario del Monaco, George London (both also at their vocal peak), Fernando Corena, Cornell MacNeil, Giuseppe Campora and Inge Borkh. Decca’s “house” conductors — Alberto Erede, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli and Franco Capuana — elicit idiomatic and spirited, if not invariably deluxe, readings from the hard-working Orchestra and Chorus of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome.
