Here is a pleasure and, frankly, a surprise. Personally, I had long given up any idea of hearing songs of this kind sung with an authentic Italianate tone and a refined yet passionate sensibility. You used to hear it in the records of De Lucia and Battistini, and some of Caruso's and Schipa's. Gigli brought superb natural gifts but also participated in the broadening and coarsening of style which gradually (and metaphorically) gave to 'Neapolitan' songs (as they came to be known, whether from Naples or not) a middle-aged face heavy with make-up and the passions of yesteryear. With later singers came luxurious orchestral accompaniments, often in appalling arrangements, or, as when Ruggero Raimondi recorded a selection with more tasteful accompaniment on Erato, a feeling that the flame which used to light the Italian singing of such things had gone out.
Now comes Ernesto Palacio, the Peruvian tenor who for many years has given accomplished but certainly not over-praised performances of Rossini and other lyric composers, regaining something of what one imagines to be the authentic style and providing a genuine musical pleasure. Tosti's songs have a gentle grace and an inner fire: a singer who is sensitive to the first quality will almost certainly discover the second. Palacio, with his clean-cut voice and well-modulated tone, seeks out the charm and the heart of these songs, so that Ideale for instance has a fine inner, musing poetry about it, and (unlikely as it may seem) Non t'amo piu! has at least as much affinity with Die schone Mullerin as with Pagliacci. The arrangements, by Massimo de Bernart (for a small, intimate instrumental group) are delightful in themselves and delightfully played. Good recording and documentation, with some excellent photographs of the composer.'