Not one for the shopping-list. As well as containing some of Chaliapin's best recordings the recital also has a whole clutch of his worst, and the transfers do not help to reconcile one to the stylistic enormities. On stage, because of his presence, his genius with make-up and so forth, the Don Giovanni, Il barbiere di Siviglia and La sonnambula solos may just possibly have been acceptable, even exhilarating but on record they are for the most part ungainly distortions. The death of Don Quixote, despite the virtuosity of the double role (he plays Sancho Panza as well), in this version and out of context is a debauch which one can hardly claim credit for preferring not to witness. Mefistofele's ''Ave, Signor'' and Boris Godunov's death are better heard in the recordings made at Covent Garden. The monologue and Clock scene are certainly among the great recordings of the century, Farlaf's Rondo and Varlaam's song too, but with the exception of Varlaam they are included on EMI References (mono CD CDH7 61009-2, 6/88) which consistently represents the great man at his best and in startlingly fine transfers. Boris's death is described in the notes as being ''hard to follow''—but not half as hard, one is tempted to add, as ''Merry Shrovetide'' when the notes give so little information about its verbal contents. But that is not what is meant: ''Chaliapin's rendering of the Russian Orthodox Creed as set by Archangelsky is the only recording of his that conceivably could do so''. Hard luck, however, for what actually follows is the other side of the 78rpm original, Grechaninov's Two-fold Litany.'