I have often pleaded for the return of this admirable performance to the catalogue. At last my wish has been granted—and it proves an exceptional bargain. For about £10·00 you get some 158 minutes of music. The virtues of the set were and are those of a well-schooled ensemble under a mercurial conductor. The work was recorded at the Abbey Road Studio No. 1 in July 1955, not long after performances at Glyndebourne with the same cast, apart from the Susanna, Sciutti replacing Elena Rizzieri. So, not surprisingly, you enjoy—as in the more recent Glyndebourne recording (Haitink/EMI)—an easy sense of singers naturally reacting to each other in a staging originally prepared by that master of Mozart ensemble, Carl Ebert.
The cast is headed by Jurinac's warm, appealing Countess, as rewarding as any on record, sung in golden tone and responsive to the emotions of the moment—listen to ''Dove sono'' and its recitative (second CD, track 10). Her husband at that time, Sesto Bruscantini, is a light-voiced, eager Figaro, much in the vein of Desderi (Haitink). Indeed, the Italianate bite and diction of his performance and that of Sciutti, a nimble Susanna (enchanting in her Act 4 aria), and Calabrese, an imposing if sometimes slightly rough Almaviva, is another of the set's advantages. The small parts are well taken, a special delight being Cuenod's Basilio (although his aria, included on LP, has here been left out, presumably to get the performance on to two CDs; a pity yet understandable). A drawback is Rise Stevens's tired-sounding and unidiomatic Cherubino, but even she fits well enough into the ensemble.
Gui's matching of tempos is laudable and he draws playing from the RPO, then doubling as the Glyndebourne orchestra, that is at once disciplined and full of character. On the new, digital transfers, I felt some of the warmth of the original may have drained away, but the difference is marginal. This was one of EMI's earliest stereo efforts, and the placings are well managed, with the sense of intimacy you get in the theatre at Glyndebourne and which so often eludes modern recordings. The Giulini (EMI), also on two discs, is superior vocally and musically but costs more, as does the contemporaneous (to the Gui) Kleiber version (Decca), another strong contender. So, the impecunious newcomer should hurry to catch this set while it's available—such reissues have the habit of not lasting long in the catalogue.'