“You are awful – but I like you.” The late Dick Emery’s catch-phrase was what first came to mind when I went back to this set at the time of its reappearance on CD in 1988. Recorded in New York’s Manhattan Center in 1958, the set originally made its mark by virtue of its vitality (Leinsdorf conducts with a very sure touch), its theatricality and its completeness. Apart from the excellent Cesare Valletti, the male singers all go in for a good deal of improvisation in the nudge-nudge-know-what-I-mean school of acting. That said, Merrill, Tozzi and Corena were all masters of that particular style, and after some of the bloodless studio-bound affairs we have had since 1958, it is all very enlivening. On the distaff side, Roberta Peters is a problem: a bird-like coloratura of the kind Rossini himself specifically loathed, but very good in her way.
The present reissue is in RCA’s Living Stereo series. There is a lot of production and wide-angle stereo separation as was the style then (and why not?). The sound itself is very clear and clean; and there is not the slightest trace of tape hiss. Three mid-price CDs makes the reissue relatively expensive. The Galliera/Gobbi/Callas and Gui/Bruscantini/de los Angeles recordings are both on two CDs, and the excellent recent Naxos set is on three CDs but at super-budget price. That said, the RCA set is a marvellous representative example of a style of recording, and a style of Rossini performance, soprano Rosina and all, that we just do not hear today. (The more’s the pity, I hear someone whisper.)'