Verdi I DUE FOSCARI. Piero Cappuccilil (bar) Francesco Foscari; Jose Carreras (ten) Jacopo Foscari; Katia Ricclarelli (sop) Lucrezia; Samuel Ramey (bass) Jacopo Loredano; Vincenzo Bello (ten) Barbarigo; Elizabeth Connell (sop) Pisana; Mieczyslaw Antoniak (ten) Officer; Franz Handlos (bass) Doge's servant; Austrian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra / Lamberto Gardelli.

Philips (Mid price) (CD) 422 426-2PM2 (two discs, nas: 104 minutes: ADD). Notes, text and translation included. From 6700 105 (4/78).

When reviewing the flawed Giulini Nuova Era/ New Note performance in October, I indicated that a CD version of the Philips set was imminent. Well, here it is, and I find it quite as recommendable as when I reviewed it first almost 12 years ago. I hardly need repeat my encomium for the work itself, except to say that it is invaluable to have the piece complete rather than cut as on that Giulini version. It isn't a long opera, and it deserves to be heard as an entity.

I was lavish in my praise of this reading back in 1978, but in the light of what has followed, one can now hear that here we have possibly the most worthwhile contribution of conductor and all three principals to opera on disc. Gardelli's unfussy, direct, supportive conducting can hardly be praised enough. When Verdi interpreters are so few and far between how admirable it is to hear Gardelli provide the right tempos, dynamics and rhythmic emphasis every time.

Carreras may lack some of the delicacies his role of the condemned Jacopo calls for and which Bergonzi provided for Giulini, but he is here in pristine voice, singing his great prison scene with the utmost sincerity, adumbrating the character's desperation. Cappuccilli is absolutely in his element as the gloomy old Doge and father, a portrait to set alongside his superb Boccanegra. The breath control and cantabile he displays in his first aria, "O vecchio cor", is a classic of Verdi singing to compare with Amato's acoustic performance, and he is just as sensitive in his final scene of resignation and in his duet with Lucrezia. Ricciarelli sings this difficult role with lustrous tone and unflinching attack: she has done nothing better on record. She floats a glorious A over the chorus in her first aria and finds no difficulty in the divisions, where she (and Verdi) condemn injustice. The very young Samuel Ramey makes much of little as the intriguing, vicious Loredano.

The recording, made in Vienna, is up to the high standards of the Philips Verdi series, and the radio forces there contribute effectively to the set's undoubted success. It should be desired by every Verdian.

Copyright © 1989 Gramophone Magazine.