CD Decca Puccini: Madama Butterfly ( Karajan - Freni, Pavarotti, Ludwig ) CD + BluRay Audio

inregistrare din 1974
disc editat in 2014


Interpreteaza:

Mirella Freni - Madama Butterfly
Luciano Pavarotti - Pinkerton
Christa Ludwig - Suzuki
Robert Kerns - Sharpless

Wiener Philharmoniker ( dirijor - Herbert von Karajan )


Presented on 2CDs + High Fidelity Pure Audio Blu-ray disc containing the complete opera in 24-Bit audio.

Remastered in ultra-high quality 96kHz/24-bit audio at Abbey Road Studios in 2014 under the supervision of long-term Decca balance engineer Philip Siney.

--Barbara Eisner Bayer:

"Since Madama Butterfly has more stage time than other sopranos, it is imperative that the singing actress captures extensive dramatic variety in addition to singing with exquisite tone and an affinity to Puccini. Mirella Freni, one of the greatest recorded Butterfly's of all time, succeeds at these demands with vocal sensitivity and eloquence. She is assisted by Karajan's superb, symphonic conducting, crisply and poignantly realizing all of Puccini's vast moods; Ludwig's urgent, loving and tenderly sung Suzuki; and Pavarotti's endearing and almost likeable Pinkerton. In addition, the Pavarotti-Freni duets are nectars of the gods. Get out the tissues and indulge."

Gramophone.co.uk:

"In every way except one, the transfer of Karajan’s radiant Vienna recording for Decca could hardly provide a firmer recommendation. The reservation is one of price – this Karajan is on three discs, not two. However, it does allow each act to be self-contained on a single disc, and for such a performance as this no extravagance is too much. Movingly dramatic as Renata Scotto is on the Barbirolli set, Mirella Freni is even more compelling. The voice is fresher, firmer and more girlish, with more light and shade at such points as ‘Un bel dì’, and there’s an element of vulnerability that intensifies the communication. In that, one imagines Karajan played a big part, just as he must have done in presenting Pavarotti – not quite the superstar he became but already with a will of his own in the recording studio – as a Pinkerton of exceptional subtlety, not just a roistering cad but in his way an endearing figure in the first act.

Significantly CD brings out the delicacy of the vocal balances in Act 1 with the voices deliberately distanced for much of the time, making such passages as ‘Vienna la sera’ and ‘Bimba dagli occhi’ the more magical in their delicacy. Karajan, in that duet and later in the Flower duet of Act 2, draws ravishing playing from the Vienna Philharmonic strings, getting them to imitate the portamento of the singers in an echt-Viennese manner, which is ravishing to the ear. Christa Ludwig is by far the richest and most compelling of Suzukis."