Un Ballo in Maschera

This performance, recorded live in New Orleans in April 1950, is notable only for the presence in the cast of the great Swedish tenor Jussi Björling. He sang the role of Riccardo often--Stockholm, La Scala, the Met, and elsewhere--and even coached with Toscanini in 1953 for a performance that was aborted, but he never recorded the opera commercially. Here he is in excellent voice, manly, fluent, and lyrical, especially effective in "Di' tu se fedele" in Act I, with an interpolated high B, and in "Si, rivederti, Amelia" in Act II, with an unexpected and brilliant interpolated high C. Except for the strong baritone of Marko Rothmüller as Renato, the rest of the cast (including Suzy Morris as Amelia and Audrey Schuh as Oscar) is nowhere near his level, and Walter Herbert leading the New Orleans Opera Orchestra and Chorus is no more than adequate. Bits of the performance are missing, and the sound varies from poor to wretched. This release will be valuable to Björling fans but offers little to anyone else. --Alex Morin