I loved the performance! Thank you very much ! It was wonderful to listen all my colleges and me too as Liu after 55 years‼️ Irma Urrila

This recording is a fitting memorial to Berit Lindholm who died just over a month ago at the age of 88. Opera Depot already has another Turandot with Lindholm sung in the original Italian (OP #11123) that is very fine and this one from three years earlier is just as good. The Swedish soprano has a very different voice from Birgit Nilsson, but it's just as effective. She soars through the high tessitura with ease and amply shows Turandot's vulnerability and strength.Her Calaf, Hans Johansson, is the real discovery here. His ringing, plangent voice sounds eerily similar to Jussi Björling with confident top Cs in the second act. How is he not better known? I look forward to hearing him again. Irma Urrila is a lovely Liu and Rolf Cederlöf an excellent Timur. The three ministers are superb. The Altuom registers as a character for once. Varviso conducts an exciting performance; a pity he cuts Turandot's "Dal primo pianto" in the last scene. It only last a few minutes and gives the Chinese princess more dimension. The sound, a few minor pops aside, is excellent. For fans of the opera or the singers, especially Johansson.

This new release caught my eye although at first -being the possessor of 19 Turandots- I didn’t really think I needed a Swedish-language version. However, being a fan of Berit Lindholm (much work happily available from Opera Depot) and having seen her with Jon Vickers in an unforgettable Tristan at Covent Garden in 1980, I decided to repay Andy’s generous free download of the Pasadena Tosca by grabbing this performance. How glad I am that I did!Lindholm is...simply spectacular! The singer is caught at her most exciting, the voice fully mature (she was 35) and just entering her more-dramatic period; her first Bayreuth Brunnhilde had been in the previous year. As Turandot, she simply overwhelms the listener (and the audience) with her fearless attack and vocal brilliance – yet still manages to sing lyrically where required and to give us some sense of the Princess’s trauma and quandaries (this poor serial killer really needed therapy!) I am bowled over by a performance that rivals those of Nilsson...yes, I mean that.

So, I asked myself, who is or was Hans Johansson? I looked him up and found a Wikipedia entry as ‘HANS DORNBUSCH’ (look it up) – he apparently changed his name in 1970. At the time of this performance he was only 25 but gives us a splendid Calaf. He’s “school of Bjoerling” but by no means second-class; he had won the Jussi Bjoerling Scholarship in 1967 and -on the strength of this performance- was living up to a growing reputation. Johansson/Dornbusch possesses a fine, lyric-heroic tenor in his own right, completely unfazed by the many difficulties of the role...listen to his intelligent way with the set pieces...and he and Lindholm really hit the heights in their Act Three duet. I have found a Butterfly on YouTube (with the tenor as Pinkerton) which looks interesting and which I will shortly be investigating:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOFSaDlGv9MIrma Urrila -well-known as Pamina in the Bergman film version of The Magic Flute (also in Swedish)- is a lovely Liu. A strong, surprisingly-Puccinian lyric soprano, whom I would like to hear as Mimi, Butterfly, Manon Lescaut and Magda in Rondine.

The Timur is sadly weak and somewhat lets the side down -you really do need a strong bass- and we get the “usual” wobbly, old-man act from the Altoum. However, there’s a fairly-good set of Ministers...anyone know who sings Pang...and the Mandarin, for that matter?Silvio Varviso is the strong, exciting conductor of a very decent orchestra (shame about the trumpets just before ‘Straniero, ascolta’...or the Swedish equivalent!) and enthusiastic chorus.And is there a problem that the performance is sung in Swedish? It’s all so splendid, with great broadcast sound, that I hardly noticed!