For its historical importance (an off-putting phrase, but true, I believe) as well as its intrinsic merits and the peach of a title-role that it offers to a dramatic soprano, La Wally deserves to be kept in at least the appendix to the repertory and to be recorded every generation or so. It is, though, very difficult to cast. A dramatic soprano, undoubtedly, as Wally herself, but she needs also the ample line of a lyric spinto (the part was created by Hariclea Darclee, the first Tosca; Destinn and Caniglia were among her successors) and, ideally, something else to soften a character that can so easily seem a hoyden. The tenor and baritone roles are no easier: thankless tasks, both of them (you sometimes get the impression that their sole function is to prompt extravagant responses from the larger-than-life heroine), but both need fine voices plus something else if the tenor is not to seem an insensitive oaf and the baritone a mere pasteboard villain.
Singing actors, ideally; or at least artists with... call it what you will: glamour, presence, star quality. The upper register of Eva Marton's voice has all of these: it is huge, gleaming, heroic and effortlessly produced. She has been working hard and intelligently on the rest of the voice, too: it can now be scaled down and it can be purged of vibrato. But not often enough, alas: all too frequently what she delivers is that big, gleaming, but fundamentally un-Italian sound, magnificent in itself and highly appropriate to some of her other roles, but conveying little but the most generalized sense of character. For what I mean by un-Italian try her Act 1 aria, the famous ''Ebben? Ne andro lontana'': the tune only really achieves its proper yearning quality, its full charge of, if you insist, sentimentality, when the strings take it up, despite the generosity of Marton's singing. For what I mean by character compare Renata Tebaldi on Fausto Cleva's 1960s set for Decca. Another singer with metal to the voice, not much of a singing actress, but the ease with which she can move within a phrase from fearless fortissimo to quiet purity makes a world of difference. Marton is fine in the huge, ample phrases; much less successful at, often not capable of, the tiny and subtle shadings that can bring even such an emblematic character as Wally to life.
Araiza's assumption of the role of Giuseppe Hagenbach is his claim, I take it, to be regarded as a tenore robusto. He is ill-advised. The loud, high notes are indubitably there, but on the way up to them the strain is audible and worrying, and the effort involved gives him little room for expressiveness. One would not expect much of that quality from Decca's stentorian Mario del Monaco, but ringing, genuinely robusto tenorings were his stock-in-trade, and they are effortless. Titus as Vincenzo Gellner is strikingly vehement, with a touch of grit to the tone that adds urgency, but like his colleagues he seldom sings quietly; for the conflicts within Gellner's personality and for an indication of how fundamentally cantabile the role is, you will need to turn to Piero Cappuccilli's intelligent portrayal for Cleva.
Slightly ham-fisted production (the huntsmen in Act 1 have obviously already arrived on stage while the chorus is still excitedly saying ''they'll soon be here''; Wally clearly employs a stunt-person for her death-defying descent of the ravine into which Hagenbach has been thrown in Act 3, since her cry of ''he's still alive!'' is delivered from the front of the stage), decent choral singing and orchestral playing under a conductor who makes a good case for the opera. And Wally's tomboy follower Walter is well portrayed by the agreeably pale-voiced, indeed rather boyish soprano of Julie Kaufmann. Not a lot, though, to be set in the balance against the ageing but stylish and spirited Decca version. With a recording that still sounds very creditable it is clearly preferable to the newcomer in virtually every respect.'