Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #215595 in Music
• Released on: 2004-02-16
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 110 minutes

Customer Reviews

!!!Sextetless!!!
This recording ought to come with a warning label: it has been butchered beyond belief! Not only does is cut Gobbi's role at the end of the mad-scene (as the programme notes remark) but it also omits "Che mi frena!" (an omission that the notes about the recording ignore). "Lucia" without the Sextet (no matter how much of a warhorse some may find it) is like Damon without Pythias; Holmes without Watson; bacon without eggs.

The sound quality is also disturbing enough to occlude Callas' diction (although her voice in "Ardon l'incensi" and "Spargi d'amaro pianto" shines through in its limpidity). I was also very disappointed that Giuseppe di Stefano did not use his sublime mezza voce in the heartrending "Tu che a Dio spiegasti l'ali" in the last act, as he did in a cassette recording of another performance with Callas that I bought in Italy (Infuriatingly, I lost it in moving!).

This disc serves as an historical reference recording; a musical footnote, as it were. But without the Sextet, the citation remains incomplete.