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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Wonderful Performance, October 3, 2000
There are four good reasons to buy this set:1) Giacomo Aragall singing Romeo. The Spanish tenor is at the height of his powers here, and uses his beautiful, light voice to turn in a remarkably subtle and strong performance, making Romeo a manly, romantic hero and not some wimp. Marvellous! 2) Renata Scotto as a fascinating and impressive Juliet. She also was captured at the top of her development and this is music ideal for her voice. Her Juliet is a woman of delicacy and substance. Again a magnificent performance, even if the two principals sound like adult lovers and not the dopey teenagers required for the weird story to make much sense. The set includes some bonus tracks at the end providing about 20 minutes of Scotto singing excerpts from Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Bizet and Mascagni. These are less of an addition than might be thought, since the recording quality is such as to emphasize weaknesses in the voice and produce rather screeching sounds in some jumps and crescendos. Still, even these are interesting, and in the main work Scotto is radiant. 3) Luciano Pavarotti, singing the comparatively minor role of Tibaldo. Here is the young Pavarotti, terribly exciting with his well controlled use of his incredible instrument. Worth the price of admission alone. 4) The committed and involved playing of the La Scala forces under the baton of Claudio (not Roberto) Abbado, who apparently also did the adaptation to allow a tenor Romeo. He produces an exciting overall performance, so that this performance is far more than some spectacular star turns. There are also unfortunately some good reasons not to buy this set: 1) Giacomo Aragall singing Romeo. Romeo was originally a contralto or mezzo part. Using a tenor alters the musical balance and so is not what Bellini originally intended. However, I think that having a masculine-sounding Romeo is a sufficient improvement to make this an unimportant shortcoming of the set. Maybe it is even an advantage. Most mezzos (with the possible exception of Frederica von Stade who showed as Cherubino that she could convincingly sound like a randy male teenager) do not sound suitable to the part and do not produce a satisfying dramatic contrast with Juliet. The lack of extended success of the opera may be due to this poor dramatic balance in part. 2) Poor sound quality, which at best is boxy and unresonant and at worst has the principals seriously off mike. But the sound-quality is not nearly as bad as that in many live Italian recordings of the 60's, and most of the recording is of high enough quality to convey the excitement of the performance. The audience is comparatively well behaved in this recording. 3) The truly wretched booklet which Gala includes. It lacks a libretto and a synopsis (needed here particularly since the source of the story is not Shakespeare). To add insult to injury, the track index gives only the first three or four words on each track and who sings them, useful only if one has a libretto. These weaknesses in the recording do not outweigh the advantages. At the budget price, this set is well worth having
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~ Nicolai Gedda
~ Vincenzo Bellini
~ Pietro Mascagni
~ Vincenzo Bellini
~ Simon Mayr
See all 20 tracks on this disc
by Luciano Pavarotti 
