This CD issue of Manon Lescaut—the third complete set available—is chiefly valuable for the beautiful performance of Montserrat Caballe as the heroine, one of her most affecting with the voice at its most alluring. Her account of ''In quelle trine morbide'' at a lightly flowing tempo is delightfully delicate, with fine shading, and the big Act 4 aria, ''Sola, perduta, abbandonata'', by contrast is strong and positive, not quite so characterful or commanding as Callas on the other EMI set for Serafin but memorable too.
Almost everthing else is disappointing. Domingo as Des Grieux sings warmly and intelligently, but his performance on the later Sinopoli set for DG is both more beautiful and more perceptive with the voice given a bloom, which it painfully lacks in the close balance of this 1972 EMI recording, which on CD if anything has even more glare than on the original LPs. The absence of atmospheric warmth and the lack of transparency in the orchestral sound make Bruno Bartoletti's conducting seem even coarser than it is, with the very opening painfully forced and breathless. Sinopoli adopts a speed hardly less hectic, but with rhythms lifted and eased, with more room made for sympathetic phrasing, and with the orchestral sound given space, the result is quite different, not at all forced. Even the mono sound for Callas/Serafin is more agreeable. It may be no more atmospheric in its dryness, but is cleanness brings more impact and a sense of presence. The new CD set inevitably takes third place after the other two.'