The sound here is listenable and pitched correctly (the singers all sound like themselves), but for such a kaleidoscopic score one really needs less muddy sound. On the other hand, London did not perform this role often and his performance is sui generis without really sounding like this is his role. Anything London did is worth hearing so I'll mention his excellent diction and keen rhythmic sense and move on.Gedda is tremendously good. He sings the music as if it were written for him, managing the high notes and everything else with enviable ease. Veasey is also first-rate, the sexual passion beneath the cool exterior almost, but never quite brimming to the surface. Her "D'amour l'ardente flamme" is especially poignant. Savoie sings Brander's brief song with flair. The chorus is also very good though the sound makes it sound mushier than it probably was. Solti's leadership is cooler than it would become in this music (his studio recording for Decca is one of his best).If you enjoy this wild, wonderful work, you should get this!

This must be the only recorded "Damnation of Faust" that is preceded by "God Save The Queen" (it being an Edinburgh Festival presentation). Georg Solti would return to Berlioz's oratorio several times but here he does not seem completely in sympathy with the piece. Strangely, it is the score's more highly dramatic pages where the wonted Solti magic fails to materialize, although he is surprisingly in sympathy with the more tender pages, even if the final apotheosis leaves much to be desired. Nicolai Gedda and Josephine Veasey are standard-setters for their roles, as they would be in Colin Davis' subsequent studio recording, which Robert Savoie is a trenchant Brander. Of George London's Mephistopheles I am of two minds. The cumbrous and black sounds don't fit comfortably into Berlioz's Classical constraints ... there's somewhat of a bull-in-a-china shop affect. Yet nothing London did was without interest and such is the case here, even if it occasionally sounds as if the Flying Dutchman has made landfall in Marguerite's boudoir. The sound is only mediocre.

a gift for Lomdon collectors