Oops...Hotter, in fact, is heard for ONE line in the bonus excerpts, just before the end.

As David McKee has written below, many may look at the cast of this performance and decide to give it a pass - big mistake. There are other performances in Opera Depot's catalog that are just as well sung and in better sound, but few have this one's intensity and drama. Vickers is a marvelous Carlo. His 1958 Covent Garden performance finds him in fresher voice, but here he is so much more specific in character and detail. Listen to the hushed way he sings when with Elisabetta or the manic way he phrases his defiance of his father in the auto-da-fe scene. Jones responds to him all the way. She was always great in this role. Randova sets the theater ablaze with her scorching "O don fatale". The cadenzas in the Veil Song (both verses) are carefully, but characterfully sung. Bordoni was an excellent baritone who made few studio recordings and he sings very well here. A quarter of a century after his Met debut in the same role, Siepi is still a terrific Filippo. Wiener contributes a nasty Inquisitor. Guadagno conducts a nearly uncut performance of the four act version. He probably wasn't happy to cut the last moments in order to correspond more closely to Schiller's play, but this was Vienna. The sound is adequate, but has a few splats and some tape screeching here and there.The filler items focus on Ingrid Bjoner's strongly sung Elisabetta, sung in Italian. Fassbaender is only heard in the Act Three quartet. Hotter is advertised, but does not sing in these excerpts.

Yes, that's always going to be the point of discussion here: could Vickers hold a candle to his much younger, lighter-voiced self? For the answer, compare his Enee (Trojans) from 1957/58/69 and 72 - all, happily, on Opera Depot. What you lose in lyrical ease, youthful enthusiasm and free (what?) liquidity between the ranges of the voice, you gain in experience, intelligence and sheer, jaw-dropping dramatic identification with the role. Ideally, you should possess all four performances of The Trojans, because each one yields different pleasures - I'm talking primarily about Vickers but obviously, I'm also referring to the other singers! And so it is with the two Don Carlos. As well as in his own development, Vickers gains with his interaction with most of his later colleagues. Jones -in her lyric-moving-into-Wagner period- is the more interesting Elisabeth; the unfamiliar Bordoni more lyrical and just as committed as Gobbi (rather rough in the 1958 outing). Siepi is probably the only Philip to equal Christoff pre-Ferruccio Furlanetto...and Randova is just smashing, far better than Barbieri. One star off because -for me- Don Carlo (or Carlos) doesn't work without the Fontainbleau scene!By the way, the unnamed members of the cast are:Tebaldo Olga Warla Friar Alfred Sramek Lerma Ewald Aichberger Voice Liselotte Maikl

You might look at the polyglot cast and give this DON CARLO a miss. That would be a mistake. This was a night at the Vienna State Opera where everything clicked. Jon Vickers's dreamy and yet dangerously intense Carlo makes sense of the character as few interpreters do. He finds a poignant counterfoil is Gwyneth Jones' sweetly sung Elisabetta. The sound and fervor of Franco Bordoni's singing suggests an ardent, young Posa, while Cesare Siepi -- after a shaky start -- quickly shakes off the years to deliver a King Philip that is probably as close to definitive as one can hope. Eva Randova is a plummy, idiomatic Eboli and Otto Wiener a venom-spitting Grand Inquisitor. Even the (uncredited) Friar is imposing. Anton Guadagno's conducting is only routine but he doesn't impede an otherwise electric performance from taking place.