Whatever the merits of sets made since, this one is ensured a revered place in the pantheon of Figaro recordings, which also includes the two sets listed above. Made in 1968, when Bohm was enjoying an Indian summer, it was based on a production by Sellner at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin and indeed the production was supervised by Sellner. Since its premiere under Bohm in 1963, he had led many revivals including some performances with this cast, around the time the recording was made, which surely accounts for this sense of a true ensemble felt all round and of a thought-through interpretation. The crisp, clear, yet spacious recording, seldom matched on more recent versions, only enhances the authority and warmth of the reading.
Bohm radiates the wisdom of his years of attendance on the score without any slackening of his rhythmic grip or his demand for precision of execution; indeed this recording is superior to his two previous ones (Preiser, 11/90 and Philips, 10/94) in those respects. His choice of speeds always seems right, allowing firm articulation of note and text yet never at the expense of forward movement. Nowhere is his command of a large structure more evident than in his control of the finales to Acts 2 and 4. It was also part of Bohm’s genius to weld a heterogenous cast into a convincing whole. No need at this stretch of time to commend the singers individually; each has complete command vocally and dramatically of his or her role though one must just mention Janowitz’s dignified yet lively Countess and Mathis’s animated, alluring Susanna.
The Kleiber and Giulini versions, made in the preceding decade, are also classics in their own right, also notable for close-knit ensembles, dynamically conducted and just as individually cast. They are slightly cut, but that allows them to be contained on two CDs as against DG’s three. Even so, choice may well be made on individual preference for either conductor or particular singer.'