Celebrating the composer’s 150th Anniversary in 2008, this is a 15-CD definitive collection of his most popular operas in classic performances! Decca’s recordings of Puccini’s operas rank among the very finest ever committed to disc. This legacy was started in 1951 when Renata Tebaldi made her first recording of Madama Butterfly, and throughout the rest of the 1950s Tebaldi recorded Puccini’s other major operas. Tebaldi was cast alongside such distinguished colleagues as Carlo Bergonzi and Mario del Monaco. Acclaimed opera maestri at the helm of these recordings include Francesco Molinari-Pradelli and Tullio Serafin. This collection of the great Puccini operas includes the stereo versions of Madama Butterfly and La Bohème and is the ideal collection of some of the world’s most popular and enduring operas in acclaimed recordings that have been an integral part of Decca’s legendary opera catalogue for the past fifty years.

-----------------------------------------

R E V I E W S:

Madama Butterfly:
"Tebaldi...fines down her magnificent voice to a genuine intimacy of expression (the letter-reading scene with Sharpless is touching) and there are few accounts of the role that are more securely, more gloriously sung, and with a voice that seems without a flaw throughout its register. So many more convincingly childlike Butterflys simply have no lower notes to speak of, or are incapable of the cruelly demanding outburst of “Tu, tu, piccolo Iddio”, that it is splendid to hear in the role a voice that you know will not be found wanting at any point. And few Butterflys have been more ardently and sympathetically partnered than by Bergonzi, here in his finest voice: the love duet is superbly done." -- Michael Oliver, Gramophone [review of Decca 452594]

La Fanciulla del West:
"Capuana directs an expansive performance, but you have only to hear the haunting song of the roving minstrel, Jake Wallace, right at the start, ''Che farrano i vecchi miei'', as sung here by Giorgio Tozzi, to realize the unique atmospheric beauty of this version, with the off-stage voice as precisely placed as those on-stage. I remember an American critic comparing the sound of the Gramophone Award-winning DG version conducted by Zubin Mehta unfavourably with this, and he was right. Forceful as the Mehta performance is, the subtleties of the score are brought out even more by Capuana's reading, at once more spacious and more delicate.

The Decca producer and engineers appreciated ahead of their time what extra dimensions stereo could provide, and the final scene also remains a model of recording production. After Dick Johnson has sung his aria ''Ch'ella mi creda'', (del Monaco lusty but not coarse), Minnie's arrival, Brunnhilde-like, on her horse, outdoes any stage production I have ever seen, and the final farewells, in which the miners sing ''Che farrano i vecchi miei'' in alternate phrases with Minnie's and Dick's love song, is timed more lovingly than I have ever known it otherwise.

Tebaldi is in superb voice, hitting her top notes with pinging precision, Del Monaco with his rich tone was never finer, and Cornell Macneil gives Jack Rance an apt element of nobility, making him more than a Wild West Scarpia." -- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [Review of Decca 421595]

Tosca:
"... for Tebaldi herself the last act of Tosca contains some of the most affecting passages in her whole recorded output: the tenderness of her words to Cavaradossi ('Gli occhi ti chiudero con mille baci') remain particularly vivid and precious in the memory. The Tosca is a well-produced recording, and Molinari-Pradelli handles the score with a sure sense of what is right for it. George London's Scarpia has character and impressive power; del Monaco's Cavaradossi has its predictably great moment in ''Vittoria'' and confounds the prophets by almost softly caressing 'O dolci mani.'" -- Gramophone

La Bohème:
"Tebaldi’s Mimi has always been overshadowed by those, from around the same period, of Callas (Votto) and de los Angeles (Beecham)...But the role has not often been more securely, more gloriously sung, and in matters of phrasing, of sustaining an expressive arch of melody, Tebaldi is very often superb. The set is also notable for Bergonzi’s meticulous, immaculately sung Rodolfo (his only recording of the role), for Bastianini, in his finest voice as Marcello, and for Siepi’s noble-voiced Colline..." -- Michael Oliver, Gramophone [review of Decca 448725]