My favourite soprano, Joan Sutherland, as Lucia di Lammermoor, one of her best roles and, moreover, in her prime (1961). One of the best live performances of Gaetano Donizetti's masterpiece I have ever heard, featuring a starry cast, under the fine guidance and baton of John Pritchard. A must! Another must! Thank you ever so much, my dear friend Andy and my dear friends at OPERA DEPOT!

It's wonderful, breathtaking, probably Sutherland's best preserved performance, with a marvelous, vital supporting cast, conductor and orchestra/chorus - and in such good sound......BUT...Shame on Covent Garden and John Pritchard for cutting the Wolf's Crag scene. With Turp singing so sensitively and heroically, and Shaw (for once) in secure, virile voice - as well as both being absolutely alive to the dramatic situations of each scene/sequence, just think about how this scene would have sounded!!One star deducted for this infamia!Sorry, I'm very ungrateful, aren't I?!

Before you listen to this performance, try to take yourself back to a time before we opera lovers all became used to Sutherland taking that thrilling sound all the way up to high D's and E-flat's. She was in excellent voice and offers pristine coloratura, perfect trills, and huge stratospheric notes that make your toes tingle. Her colleagues are equally good. I've heard Andre Turp before, but here he sings sweetly and partners Sutherland like a champion. His final scene is not the anti-climax it can become (especially after a Sutherland Mad Scene). John Shaw and Joseph Rouleau demonstrate why they were so highly regarded at Covent Garden and elsewhere. The other singers are just as good as the stars. Pritchard leads a sturdy performance that includes the rarely heard (at that time) Raimondo-Lucia scene.The sound is excellent, a few moments of brief radio crackle notwithstanding. The audience seems enthusiastic, but oddly don't applaud after the first part of the Mad Scene. Even if you've already heard Sutherland's Lucia many times, you should get this if only to discover again why Dame Joan was called La Stupenda!

Especial por la presencia de Turp cantando Lucia.

This is indeed a fantastic Lucia. I will try to brief with this review, as your time is better spent buying and listening to this amazing performance. Joan Sutherland is out-of-this-world here, at least as amazing as in her first Lucia, and the sound quality is great. This recording manages to capture the size of her voice in a way that hundreds of others have failed, and when listening to this with headphones, one can truly begin to understand how large the voice was even this early in her career. The E-flat at the end of \""Spargi d'amaro Pianto\"" is one of the longest she ever did live, long enough, in fact, to rival her studio recording in 1961. Truly a must-have.