Requiem (Rm) [Import]

Oh, wow!! This recording is a great example of what's missing in today's opera world: four great singers who sing like it is the last piece they'll ever perform! OK, so M. Caniglia can't always attack high B in PPPP, but how many sopranos truly can? Her chest voice seems almost surreal in today's world of tweety-bird sopranos. Gigli, as always, does whatever he wants with his voice and sounds gorgeous! Both Pinza and Stignani are top notch! While it is easy to criticize the sound, I think that, given when this piece was recorded, sound engineers did a fantastic job! This album should be preserved to remind us of glory days of Italian singing tradition. It is simply impossible to duplicate this today!

This was the best Requiem of its time with the greatest solo quartet of its time. Today to our ears, it sounds dated. That's why I gave it four stars instead of five. This recording has flaws, but they are flaws of grandeur! Caniglia was one the greatest italian sopranos, but the voice turned squally in the top. We know that! But she is a always extremely musical and strong in the middle voice. Gigli was the successor to Caruso. He had one of the most beautiful voices in history with a dynamic range capable of huge fortissimi down to the smallest mezzovoce pianissimo.BUT, he also had mannerisms that would not be accepted today. Stignani is always a rock of strength, singing in tune and on pitch. No one has ever sung the bass part better than Pinza. The dating shows in the chorus parts, where that extremely full climaxes tend to crumble, but remember, Serafin was a brave conductor. He was recording huge pieces like Aida and the Requiem in the Rome opera house, before WWII. The technology of the day simply did not permit a real reproduction of what he and the chorus were doing. Another interesting fact is that this was recorded on 1939, on the eve of WWII. All in all, to me, this is a great recording, with great voices, all of which far exceed the limitations of the technology. I would not be without this recording!

Now that this recording has been remastered so brilliantly, one can hear the solo and choral voices reverberating in a nice acoustic space as never before, and all concerned sing well. My complaints center around Gigli: though generous of voice, he just sobs and glots too much for me, and his timbre is high and bright which means that he doesn't really sound right in the "Quid sum miser" and "Lux aeterna." Di Stefano (with Toscanini) was more of a "low" tenor and, thus, a better choice. In addition, Serafin does not really "wake the dead" in his "Dies irae": the biting brass and heart-stopping bass drum whacks of the Toscanini performance are missing here. In short, this is about equal to the Karajan version, good but not great.