This is a recording of what was not only the first performance of Eugene Onegin in Russian at the Vienna Staatsoper but the début of Seiji Ozawa as an opera conductor in the city. It was evidently a highly successful occasion – 14 years later, he became the Opera’s music director – which makes it the more regrettable that the actual recording does such poor justice to the performance. It is recorded at a very low level, and turning the volume up does little to improve the sense that the singers are coming from a great distance and not always successfully crossing or even reaching the orchestra.

There are, nevertheless, some excellent performances. Mirella Freni’s Tatyana is a touching interpretation, and though she does not resist the familiar temptation for singers to go rather over the top in the Letter Scene, she sings it beautifully, and her shocked, sad tones in the subsequent interview with Onegin are in moving contrast. Though the part came rather late in her career, she still has the resources for a powerful closing scene with Onegin that includes a climactic top B. She also manages the Russian well (apart from a trivial slip that almost reverses the meaning of what she is singing), rather better than some of the others. Onegin is handsomely sung by Wolfgang Brendel when it comes to the final scene; earlier, he is dry of voice as well as manner when rejecting Tatyana’s advances.

Peter Dvorsky’s Lensky is intelligently sung, with just the right degree of effusiveness as this self-conscious poet serenades Olga, then a touching forlornness as he mourns the passing of his days (‘Kuda, kuda’) and then joins Onegin in the tragically dislocated canon they sing before the duel.

Nicolai Ghiaurov’s sterling Gremin completes the quartet of singers who had sung the work together earlier the same year at Covent Garden. New in Vienna was a rather heavy Olga from Rohangiz Yachmi.

Ozawa draws succulent playing from the Vienna orchestra. Some of his tempi are unnecessarily fast, but he works well with the singers. It is hardly surprising that in the waltz it sounds as if we are in Prince Orlovsky’s Viennese villa rather than Mme Larina’s Russian country house, complete with schmaltzy swoops from the violins.

There is neither text nor translation included in the booklet, a particular drawback when the recording makes the words intermittently so hard to hear.