Regina Resnik made her Covent Garden debut as Carmen in 1957, and four years later recorded the role for Decca. This ''Golden Jubilee'' anthology recalls the voice as it was then: as light as Edward Downes's touch with the Royal Opera Orchestra in Habanera and Seguidilla, and with as seamless a portamento from highest soprano to lowest mezzo as she was to display in the equally wide range of roles she took on throughout her career.
The vibrant, bright soprano register, more powerful than beautiful, was to remain, even when in the mid-1950s she became a bona fide mezzo. It rings out of her Azucena (''Condotta ell'era in ceppi'') and her Eboli (''O don fatale''). At the other end of the scale, Resnik's full-bodied chest voice glows out of Dalila's ''Mon coeur s'ouvre'' (1961), muscles in to a stentorian Mistress Quickly (''Reverenza!'', 1963), and reaches the very bottom of the abyss in ''Re dell'abisso'' (Un ballo in maschera, 1970).
The height of this recording, in terms of interpretative prowess, is without doubt Resnik's Klytemnestra, singing opposite Nilsson's Elektra with Solti in 1966: the depths a somewhat gruesome Merry Widow Cancan in which she sounds like a drum majorette leading a troop of chipmunks. Her ''Not since Nineveh'' (Kismet, 1963), however, should not be missed.'