The great strength of this set is de los Angeles's touchingly vulnerable Butterfly, sketched as much by purity of vocal colour as by detailed word-painting. That strength is much reduced, alas, when the recording (which was always close and rather dry, but with great clarity of detail as compensation) is brightened and acidified by its transfer to CD. The strings (who sound skinny and under-manned) and the higher voices are the most affected, though even Sereni's dull Sharpless has taken on a grainy quality. Bjorling's elegantly sung and finely phrased Pinkerton is given such a metallic edge that at times you can hardly distinguish him from de Palma's wheedling Goro, while de los Angeles's tone, whenever the voice rises to forte or above, is sadly tarnished.
If this were her only recording of the role one might grumblingly put up with such distortion (for that is what it amounts to) for the sake of her poignant and always musical insights into Butterfly's character. But since EMI have also issued her earlier assumption of the role (albeit in mono) we can have her Butterfly in an alternative reading. Further inducements are provided by the Pinkerton in that earlier set (Giuseppe di Stefano, in splendid voice and more youthfully ardent-sounding than Bjorling), the Sharpless (Tito Gobbi, no less—his only recording of the role, and perhaps the finest on record) and the conductor, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, streets ahead of Santini, who contrives to be both hurried and plodding.
If you insist on stereo or a mid-price version, the best bet for Butterfly at present is Barbirolli's, alos on EMI. That too, has had the bloom of its surface removed with the acoustical equivalent of paint-stripper, but Renata Scotto's moving account of the title-role and Carlo Bergonzi's elegant Pinkerton withstand the process better than de los Angeles and Bjorling. What to my mind is the three-star, desert-island Butterfly is, alas, also the no-expense-spared Butterfly: Karajan's Decca version, which spreads onto three full-price CDs but offers Mirella Freni as the most involving and vocally subtle Cio-Cio-San imaginable and Luciano Pavarotti's incom- parable Pinkerton. And its sumptuous recording makes the present reissue sound very seedy indeed.'