Neither of these recordings met with a really enthusiastic review when first released on LP: Andrew Porter found Caballe undramatic, Perlea dull and the recording underproduced (''not a performance of the opera in the way that Walter Legge's Angel or John Culshaw's Decca sets are; rather, a collection of good singers in a studio going through the score''), while, in 1979, LS thought Decca's Sutherland variable (''at her swoopiest and swooniest'' in her appreciation of the sleeping Gennaro but snapping out of it later) and Bonynge inclined to confuse ''full-bloodedness with blood-and-thunder''. These two critics shared a liking for the opera itself, but AB, reviewing the CD reissue of the Decca set ''in an anti-Donizetti phase'', wrote of ''tired formulas'' and ''moments of real inspiration [being] rather few and far between''.
This time round, I thought Perlea's conducting carried more conviction and Caballe's singing more dramatic involvement than the review (and memory) suggested. Her alternations of tenderness and regal authority bring the woman to a more interesting kind of life than Sutherland manages to do, and when she is playing opposite Alfredo Kraus a genuinely mutual responsiveness does much to counteract the sense of a concert performance or merely ''going through the score''. With the proviso that there aren't any trills worth speaking of (and they are not a luxury in this role), Caballe sings the part beautifully, her voice at its loveliest, the tone completely steady (contrasting with Sutherland) and the breadth of phrasing a delight. Kraus is splendid (but Aragall, with Sutherland, is also very fine); Flagello sonorous and preferable in the part to the baritone Ingvar Wixell; and as Orsini, Verrett has exactly the freshness that makes it just possible to think of her as Gennaro's young friend, which Horne, for all the sumptousness of her voice, did not. On balance, then, I prefer this recording as far as the singing is concerned—and that is much. The orchestra is less of a presence than in the later version, and there is less pointed attention to detail. Textually, Bonynge is preferable, certainly in the inclusion of the fine aria for Gennaro recovered by Bonynge and originally performed in St Petersburg. As to the musical value of the opera, if it were all up to the standard of the Prologue, with its intensely moving ensemble, it would be great indeed; as it is, I still find it yielding more, rather than less, as time goes by.'