Scotto opens, not putting her best note forward at the start of ''Un bel di'' but availing herself of the luxury Sir John Barbirolli's tempo provides and making a blazing declaration out of the last phrases. There is more Puccini to come when Freni in freshest, most lustrous voice, sings ''Si, mi chiamano Mimi'', but for the moment Mozart intervenes: Scwarzkopf with determined frown and majestic command of recalcitrant intervals in ''Come scoglio'' (Cosi fan tutte), Sutherland discovering the creamy soft-centre of Donna Anna in ''Non mi dir'' (Don Giovanni). For no very discernible reason Lakme's Bell song comes next, and Gruberova, recorded in 1982, seems not quite in period with the others, though she is well up to their standard. De los Angeles's delightful Rosina and Callas's vividly distraught Lucia are both classics of their kind—Caballe's Aida, sounding gloriously full-bodied after some rather frail-toned Cotrubas in Les pecheurs de perles. Caballe strings the phrases of ''O patria mia'' on a miraculously held line of breath, the high C dolce (as Verdi must have dreamt of it) and the final pianissimo floated and sustained to perfection: 'celeste Aida' indeed.
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