There are two essential Puccini recitals: one is Callas's 1954 EMI (CD CDC7 47966-2—to be reviewed later), the other this. They contrast interestingly, Callas making a new individual out of each character in turn, Caballe making each character sound much the same but as though minting a new aria each time. In Liu's appeal to Calaf, for instance, the phrase ''io... l'ombra d'un sorriso'' comes most touchingly and freshly as a shy, reticent admission. Or in Manon Lescaut's aria, ''In quelle trine morbide'', a chill passes momentarily, breaking the phrase ''un freddo che m'agghiaccia'', while a little sigh of remembered delight spontaneously shivers in the word ''voluttuosa''. All is sensitive and personal in Mimi's solos (including a sudden asperity in ''Lei m'intende?'', an original touch but having the best of reasons, that she really does think dreamy, poetic Rodolfo isn't paying proper attention). Caballe's voice at this time was at its most beautiful (''O mio babbino caro'' and Magda's song in La rondine relayed direct from the Elysian Fields), and as for her phrasing, she seems to have such an endless supply of breath that the listener's own is taken in contemplation of it.
The playing of the LSO is another asset (sample the woodwind in ''Sola, perduta''), and the intelligence and taste of Mackerras's conducting are much in evidence, though he doesn't stop Madame (perhaps doesn't want to) from holding some final high-notes inordinately long. One query: is there a place so obvious on sleeve or record that I can't see for looking where information about the date is given? The label says ''This compilation 1986'' and the booklet refers to 1987. Without some reference to a 1970 recording date this seems to me to be incomplete, if not downright misleading.'