Puccini, Bellini, Rossini, Gounod, Verdi, Massenet

COMPOSERS: Bellini,Gounod,Massenet,Puccini,Rossini,Verdi
LABELS: RCA Victor Red Seal
ALBUM TITLE: Collection: Montserrat Caballé Ð The Ultimate Collection
WORKS: Arias by Puccini, Bellini, Rossini, Gounod, Verdi, Massenet,
PERFORMER: Montserrat Caballé (soprano)
CATALOGUE NO: 74321 37714 2 ADD/DDD
Here are more than two-and-a-half hours of the Spanish diva in arias ranging from the bel canto operas of Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini in which her beautifully pure soprano was always at its best, to the verismo composers such as Leoncavallo and Cilea to whose works she was stylistically and temperamentally less well suited. The recordings, made at various times over a period of more than thirty years, reveal her in fine voice throughout, an aria from Bellini’s Adelson e Salvini in 1995 sounding as fresh, and with as firm a legato, as the Willow Song from Verdi’s Otello in 1964. Charles Osborne