It is usually the big nineteenth-century opera sets that are bought for their singers; but with a line-up of principals such as we have here Handel too is swept into the golden net. Lucia Popp, two years into her career after her Vienna debut, Christa Ludwig, Fritz Wunderlich, Walter Berry: that is a quartet which in its time may have seemed no more than standard stuff, but at this date looks starry indeed. For those who now want no more than an assurance that they are all on good form (they are) and that the recording is not one of those that requires 'creative listening' (it isn't) I might quickly add a word or two about the opera itself, that it ''goes from one superb number to another, covering a vast range of emotion including the triumphant, the amorous, the vengeful, the deeply pathetic, almost anything you can name''.
The most eager of the star-gazers will be well away by now, but others may like to know that the words quoted are those of SS, penned in enthusiasm for the opera as heard in another, much more recently made recording, which ought to be a prior consideration if the opera itself, rather than its singers, is the prime object of interest. This was the Gramophone Award-winning version on Harmonia Mundi under Rene Jacobs with Jennifer Larmore as Caesar: not utterly faultless but nevertheless strongly recommended, as I'm sure it would be even if this performance from 1965 had then been available. The Orfeo, for one thing, is sung in German instead of Italian; it has cuts, though many fewer than the Mackerras recording in English with Dame Janet Baker; it has the solo voices recorded very close indeed (those that are supposedly off-stage are just about where many modern recordings would have them except when off-stage); and the orchestra sounds, to our re-trained ears, big and thick, with the heavy bass-line that used to seem as proper to Handel as gravy from the roast was to Yorkshire pudding. The roles of Caesar and Sextus, moreover, are taken by men, and there is not a countertenor in sight.
The origin of the recording is a broadcast on Bavarian Radio, part of an ambitious series in which Handel's principal operas and oratorios would be presented to a public far less accustomed to such things than we are today. The preparation was clearly very thorough, the text being a good one by the lights of those times, the orchestral playing of a high standard, Ferdinand Leitner's direction steady and judicious. Popp is perhaps an ideal Cleopatra, most beautiful and fresh in tone with something appropriately charismatic about the voice-character, and sensitive to the developments of this woman whom Handel has invested with such fascinating life. Ludwig, sumptuous of voice, gives a moving account of Cornelia's lament in Act 1. Wunderlich's every appearance is welcome, and he probably is best of all the soloists in securing variety and making the words tell. A bass-baritone Caesar has to deal with runs not meant for such a voice, and Walter Berry is most successful in the quieter, less florid numbers, particularly in the expression of reverence for the dead Pompey. There is much to enjoy. And there might have been still more had the ''English text enclosed'' turned out to be a libretto. All I could find by way of 'text' was a plot summary. An additional help would have been the provision of aria titles in Italian in the track-listing.'