Customer Reviews

Mozart: Cosi Fan Tutte

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

At first I owned this recording on LP:s. An imperfect English pressing but with wonderful warm sound and a perfect pressed German one, much cooler. Even if all high notes cracked on the English one, I kept it and I still have it because I am of the firm opinion that LP:s have a better and warmer sound than CD:s...
I have been listening to opera for more than 45 years and have an enormous record collection. And I must confess: This Cosi is 1)One of the best opera recordings ever made. 2)The best recorded version of this particular opera. No doubts whatsoever. Something of a wonder must have happened in the recording studio during the takings. Pure magic. During a lifetime with opera I have experienced four or five such magic "lifts" of live performances to an almost supernatural level, one of them was Cosí at the Drottningholm Court Theatre in Stockholm. When listening to records this happens more often, but the sublime moments are still rare. The record under consideration here, dr. Böhms, is such a "magic lifter", sublime throughout.

Midway is rightly the most famous naval battle of all time. The precise set of circumstances that sent four Japanese carriers to the bottom of the Pacific at the cost of the USS Yorktown was so improbable that various attempts have been made at naval academies across the world to replicate the feat. And truth to tell, they never have: the simulations invariably end up with the Rising Sun in the ascendancy. The Japanese Imperial Navy never recovered from the abject defeat. It was America's finest hour.

This famous recording is another instance where everything went miraculously right on the day. There are plenty of Cosi fan Tuttis on the market but only the Karajan comes anywhere close to matching its luminosity and sense of style Great Recordings Of The Century - Mozart: Cosi Fan Tutte / Karajan, Schwarzkopf, Merriman, Otto, Simoneau, et al. Sure, one can ascribe its success to the virtuosity of the singers, orchestra and conductor alike - and some would say that it was Walter Legge's finest hour - but there is a deeper consideration in play which I do not think we will ever fully grasp.

Whenever I hear Soave Sia ll Vento, such matters melt "in the conflagration of suns". They are not important. It is time to depart Cythera. Join us.