'Considering' can be a most inconsiderately used word, but it is hardly to be avoided here. We'll put it another way, however. Considering that Melba in 1920, Tetrazzini in 1930, Galli-Curci in 1941 and dal Monte in 1951 did not record a comparable repertoire, and that all but Melba were not recording at that age at all, we will not be indulging in golden-age comparisons. On stage, Sutherland in her fifty-ninth year can still dazzle and triumph, as we found in last year's Covent Garden Lucia di Lammermoor, but recording is a different matter. Here the beat in the voice on sustained notes is a presence which no beauty of tone can disguise. It disappears sometimes on high and down low; it does not interfere with scale-work, runs and thrills and in these we hear the old (young) Sutherland. But it is still the first thing that is likely to strike a listener. Sadly, it also combines with the habitual disinclination to draw a firm melodic line, and in doing so makes very uneasy listening.
Despite this, there is much that is characteristically warming about the record. How good, for instance, that Sutherland should still be exploring. Everything here is new to her discography, and the solo from Il castello di Kenilworth will be new to most of her listeners, bar, possibly, members of Opera Rara, who performed the work in 1977. The fine tragic sweep of the violins in the Attila solo, the plaintive elegance of Bellini's cantilena, the simple good humour of Betly's 'tralla las'—none of these is too familiar to be welcome, and in the last of them Sutherland's gaiety is vividly personal and expert in timing. Of her French arias the Africaine is probably most successful, with its emotions imaginativey caught. The ''Una voce poco fa'' does not sparkle and there is a tendency to undersline words rather tiresomely; good cadenzas, however, and a strong, solid B natural at the end. So, considering....'