Zach Top Don Carlo (3CD)

Guiseppe Verdi Don Carlo Jussi Björling in Verdi's Don Carlo - Live Performances from the MET [performed in Italian]. The radio broadcast of 11 November 1950 (released complete and in good sound for the first time—prior issues were composites), and 45 min. of excerpts from the audio track of the telecast of 6 November 1950 (first release). Don Carlo – Jussi Björling; Filippo II - Cesare Siepi; Rodrigo – Robert Merrill ; Il Grande Inquisitore - Jerome Hines; Un Frate - Lubomir Vichegonov; Elisabetta di Valois - Delia Rigal; La principessa Eboli – Fedora Barbieri; Tebaldo - Anne Bollinger; Il Conte di Lerma - Paul Franke; Un Araldo Reale – Emery Darcy; Una voce dal cielo - Lucine Amara. Chorus and Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, conducted by Fritz Stiedry. 2008 digital restorations from new sources: Ward Marston. Notes by Stephen Hastings. BUZZ: In 1950 the MET’s new manager Rudolf Bing presented Verdi’s Don Carlo. This role was Bjorling’s last new stage role. Two different performances from that star-studded series are presented here in Ward Marston’s state-of-the-art restorations. “The great Ward Marston, the master remasterer, has performed prodigies of restoration on a set of private tapes taken from a Met broadcast of November 11, 1950, producing the first civilised recording of a performance that had been circulating in poor sound for more than 50 years. The result is a pleasure to listen to. This, with some cuts, is the four-act, 1884 revision of Verdi’s glorious score. Nowadays, we are more used to various forms of the five-act work, but there are treasures to enjoy here, with a cast led by Jussi Björling, in superb voice, and featuring Cesare Siepi’s King Philip, Fedora Barbieri’s Eboli, Robert Merrill’s Posa, Delia Rigel’s Elisabetta and Jerome Hines’s Inquisitor. “The Met orchestra is conducted by the Vienna-born conductor Fritz Stiedry, veteran of the famous Berlin Verdi revivals of the late 1920s.” — David Cairns in The Sunday Times