The real hero of this new, live recording of Rossini's still too little known early comic masterpiece is Claudio Desderi. For many years now, Desderi the baritone has been a wonderfully practised Rossini singer. Here, though, we find him conducting. And conducting as to the manner born. The result is a performance of great cogency, as well as fluency and flair. As a performance, it is as vital and stylish as Newell Jenkins's 1971 Vanguard account but, in the last resort, a shade more exciting.
Desderi is clearly helped in all this by the excellence of the production. It is the old Piccola Scala show, seen at the Edinburgh Festival some years ago, and now reappearing, groomed and finely honed, in a recent revival at Modena's Teatro Comunale. Technically, the CDs are first-rate. With microphones sensitive enough to catch the unmistakable bleep of one of those wretched digital watches, there is very little on the stage or in the orchestra-pit that goes unnoticed. Which is not to say that everything ends up being absolutely clear. When it comes to clarity, there is no substitute for the kind of accurate microphone placings and discreet stereo production we have on the Vanguard set.
Two members of the Modena cast survive from the Piccola Scala, the heroine, Helga Muller Molinari, and Paolo Barbacini's portrait of the love-sick poet Il Cavalier Giocondo. Both are very acceptable vocally, though I think it is true to say that the Vanguard set has the stronger all-round cast. Beverly Wolff is Vanguard's excellent Clarice and John Reardon is a more consistently focused Count Asdrubale than Nuova Era's Roberto Scaltriti. The Vanguard set also boasts generally excellent comprimarios; and there is the bonus of the young Jose Carreras as Giocondo.
Both sets come with useful notes, a full text, and an all-important English translation. Nuova Era squeeze the opera on to two full-price CDs; Vanguard spread it over three mid-price discs. In the end, it is a close-run affair: with the beautifully produced studio set on Vanguard ahead on points if you are thinking in terms of a library acquisition and repeated hearings over the years. Either way, the opera itself is not to be missed.'