How odd, you might think, to have a highlights disc of Verdi's Nabucco dedicated to the tenor who sings the role of Ismaele, or one of Macbeth dedicated to the disc's Macduff. Yet this Domingo Edition from DG, a comprehensive tribute to a unique tenor, concentrates fairly enough on representing him in his complete opera recordings, and each of those two Verdi operas offers masterly performances from him in those roles. Domingo himself in his note on the series promises that ''it contains many of the recordings I count among my best'', and he is ''especially pleased that this Edition is not just a collection of tenor arias'', but instead a mixture of long and short items that give an impression of each opera. No fewer than 16 of the 20 discs are operatic highlights issues, with three more devoted to what are broadly described as ''arias'', but which range far wider than that in their selection from the Domingo discography on DG. The two French discs include, for example, extended love duets from Gounod's Romeo et Juliette, Massenet's Werther and Saint-Saens's Samson et Dalila. The last disc is devoted to middle-of-the-road material, ''Songs and Tangos'' collecting items from 1976 and 1981.
What is striking is that Domingo's DG career took off some years after he had become one of the world's leading recording tenors. Only one of the recordings here was made before 1976, but then they followed thick and fast, representing him in a wide range of his finest roles, often in his second complete recordings. That applies to his Riccardo in Abbado's 1981 recording of Un ballo in maschera, very well represented here, far subtler and more perceptive than his performance for Muti on EMI five years earlier. His recording as Des Grieux in Sinopoli's 1984 version of Puccini's Manon Lescaut is another 'remake' that far outshines the earlier EMI issue, though there one comes upon a phenomenon that this wide-ranging collection of Domingo recordings tends to underline, the problems the DG engineers often seem to have had ovr recording the great tenor's voice.
I remember talking to Domingo during one of the first sessions on Manon Lescaut, and at that point he was not completely happy with the sound the engineers were getting, rather too distant, he felt. That is a constant complaint of almost every tenor in the business, and of many other artists too, but even in the completed recording there is a perceptible distancing of the voice. The Kingsway Hall acoustic is then allowed to colour it with more reverberation than is common, while the orchestra is full and forward. No doubt the very volume of Domingo's glorious tenor has encouraged engineers to consult their dials, and to take no chances, apparently with the result—particularly in the digital era—that instead of having the voice as pure as possible, it has regularly been given a halo of reverberation. The phenomenon reaches its absurd extreme in the recording of Verdi's Don Carlos, also represented here, where one's first response is to register that the singer is off-stage. In that deeply disappointing recording—sadly so, when it was the first really complete account in French—not just Domingo but all the others are similarly distanced, with an inevitable blunting of impact in the performance. Also with Abbado and La Scala forces is the set of Aida represented here, bringing another magnificent performance from Domingo, again diminished by distance.
No fewer than five of the sets are conducted by Abbado—Carmen as well as Macbeth, Aida, Don Carlos and Ballo—and three by Sinopoli—Tannhauser as well as Manon Lescaut and Nabucco. The Tannhauser brings one of the most thrilling performances of all from Domingo, and the coupling of excerpts from Wagner's Meistersinger conducted by Jochum and of Weber's Oberon by Rafael Kubelik proves to be one of the most attractive of all the Domingo Edition. That is largely—dare one say it?—because inevitably with relatively brief selections from long operas he is included in a high portion of well-chosen items. The 28 minutes of music from Oberon includes all of Huon's major items, and though the 36 minutes from Meistersinger includes nothing from Act 2, the big solos of Acts 1 and 3 plus Quintet and the closing scene provide ample meat. The Oberon recording, the only early one, dating from 1971, has much thinner sound that that of the 1976 Meistersinger.
The highlights discs generally offer between 65 and 70 minutes of music, with none lasting under an hour, but the discs of separate arias and ensembles are much less generous at around 50 minutes. I am sad, for exampoe, that in the second of the two discs devoted to French repertory Massenet's Werther is represented only by two items from Act 1, Werther's first solo and the duet with Charlotte, ''Il faut nous separer'', when there would have been plenty of room to include Domingo's radiant account of ''Pourquoi me reveiller'' from Act 3. The discs of separate items are partly drawn from complete sets of various kinds—including Daniel Barenboim's Paris recordings of Berlioz's Requiem, Damnation of Faust and Beatrice et Benedict—and partly from two 'gala' recordings, made live, the 1984 recital from Los Angeles conducted by Giulini and the 1988 gala with Met forces, conducted by James Levine with Kathleen Battle as Domingo's partner in duets. Particularly after the latest Met gala, when Domingo sang Marcello to Pavarotti's Rodolfo in the Act 4 duet from La boheme, it is a charming rarity to have Domingo here too in a baritone role, singing Don Giovanni to Battle's Zerlina in ''La ci darem la mano''. That comes from the third of the discs of separate items, devoted to the Italian repertory and ranging from Mozart to Mascagni and Puccini by way of Donizetti (items from Lucia and L'elisir d'amore) and Verdi. The only item from any of the 20 discs new to the catalogue is ''Recondita armonia'' from the forthcoming Sinopoli recording of Puccini's Tosca, the last item of all, a magnificent performance. The Songs and Tangos disc is disappointing, when the arrangements are so souped-up and the voice aggressively over-amplified, minimizing the singer's natural charm.
The new EMI disc of Domingo and Itzhak Perlman ''Together'', similarly of crossover material, offers a similar experience, but with the voice sounding even more unnatural, as though recorded in a separate echo-chamber. That may indeed be so, when the venue was BMG's dry recording studio in New York. Perlman's tone is ungraciously caught too, and having his loud solo starting Toselli's Serenade right at the beginning brings that home all the more abrasively. What a pity that so often items are put in exactly the wrong order like that. As recorded, the impression is of Domingo singing consistently loud, and it comes as some relief at the end having Strauss's Morgen! and Rachmaninov's O cease thy singing, rather gentler than the rest. Again, as on the DG disc, the essential element of charm is undermined. If the example of Caruso and McCormack in duet in pre-electric days is what inspired this issue, I fear this is no match whatever.
Domingo's Mozart disc is a disappointment too, when his years singing Otello and other big heroic roles have plainly taken their toll of his powers of projecting the upper voice gently, however firm and beautiful the sound generally remains. The slight distancing of the voice in the recording spectrum hardly alleviates the problem at all, and paradoxically, the most enjoyable, happy and relaxed performances here are of the two unheroic 'character' roles. Domingo gives a delicious little portrait of Don Basilio in Figaro and as Pedrillo in Entfuhrung sings the ''Into Battle'' aria with superb contrasts as a miniature heroic piece. There are obvious thrills in Domingo's singing of Idomeneo's big aria, ''Four del mar'', while the Emperor's brief solo in La clemenza di Tito suits his heroic style too.
Domingo's sense of line never deserts him, but most of the great items here demand much gentler handling tonally. This is a very strenuous Don Ottavio, and though Domingo valiantly tries to lighten the voice at the start of Ferrando's ''Un'aura amorosa'' it sounds a strain. Much better is Domingo's biting account of Ferrando's other aria, ''Tradito, schernito'', introduced by vehement recitative. The welcome rarities are the aria from La finta giardiniera and the tenor aria which Mozart added to his material from the C minor Mass for the oratorio Davidde penitente, intending it for the first Belmonte. At this stage I fear that such a Mozart disc is rather misguided. Far better to remember this most generously giving of tenors—who has now probably now made more major recordings than any other in history—by the vast range of items so thrillingly presented in the Domingo Edition.'