And why not? Our present-day trio have given an encore, so a second offering from Memoir Classics was only to be expected, the first one (9/92) having worked well and plenty of material remaining in store for another. A fine arresting start, too, with Bjorling's voice, as yet unaccompanied, proclaiming the prospects before young Radames and thrilling with the voice which earlier that same year had sung the aria just as brilliantly and a shade more imaginatively in Vienna (see page 184). Then Gigli: again, the first sound is so telling. Even after Bjorling, the Gigli of 1926 in the opening phrases of ''Donna non vidi mai'' from Manon Lescaut is a sound of surpassing beauty, the warmth and roundness of his tone having such an effect in the inevitable comparison. Tauber arrives with the Meistersinger Prize song, and here of course there is no comparison with the other two. Later, Bjorling introduces what I would think in the imaginary circumstances to have been a most undiplomatic comparison with Tauber, when he appropriates ''Dein ist mein ganzes Herz'' from Der Land des Lachelns, singing it dangerously well too.
Otherwise, if a favourite were to be selected from each, I would probably make it Tauber's Strauss Standchen (an intimately straightforward proposition, that ''Mach auf!''), Bjorling's ''Only a rose'' from The Vagabond King, with its beautifully placed high B flat and diminuendo at the end, and Gigli's full-blown rose of a Maria Mari (Di Capua). The transfers lack more top than I would have thought advisable in the present climate (Gigli sounding strangely unlike himself in the 1941 Improvviso from Chenier). Many of them suffer from unmannerly cut-off at or near the end. Tony Watts's insert-notes read very entertainingly, but ought to have found space to tell us something about the lesser-known songs and arias. (Alfven's Skogen sover, for instance, and the Undine solo.) Information about the originals is skimpily provided and, according to the Porter and Henrysson discography, ''Dein ist mein ganzes Herz'' dates from January 11th, 1932, not 1931.'