COMPOSERS: Bizet,Giordano,Lehar,Leoncavallo,Mascagni,Massenet,Meyerbeer,Mozart,Puccini,R Strauss,Rossini,Saint-Saens,Wagner,Weber etc
LABELS: DG
WORKS: Arias by Bizet, Giordano, Leoncavallo, Lehár, Mascagni, Massenet, Meyerbeer, Mozart, Puccini, Rossini, R Strauss, Saint-Saëns, Wagner, Weber etc
PERFORMER: Plácido Domingo, Pedro Di Proenza (tenor), Montserrat Aparici, Caterina Ligendza, Rosalind Plowright (soprano), Tatiana Troyanos (mezzo-soprano) etc
Celebrations of Domingo’s 70th birthday are bursting out all over. No bad thing when there’s plenty to celebrate, as both these compilations from record companies for whom he has recorded steadily for decades amply demonstrate.
The three-CD DG collection has its share of dross, with items by Domingo’s son and Andrew Lloyd Webber letting the standard drop. But generally it’s well planned, and inevitably covers much of the same territory and even the same arias as EMI' s Viva Domingo! It also includes two previously unreleased items, Don Carlo’s ‘Io la vidi’ under Karajan (1975) and an aria from Francisco Alonso’s zarzuela La calesera (2010) that Domingo completists will certainly want to acquire. The bulk of the booklet is given over to a combined DG and Decca discography of Domingo recordings. George Hall