The better is the enemy of the good, and this new issue, when compared with either the Abbado/DG or the Gavazzeni/RCA, only proves that adage again. I certainly enjoyed my first hearing of the new performance, but as soon as I began my comparisons it had to yield in almost every important respect to its older brethren. But let me begin on an upbeat. The close and true Decca recording seems to suit this dark and taut work very well. Then the casting of some of the less central roles couldn't be better. Paolo Coni makes a dark-toned and threatening Paolo (his voice is so firm and pleasing I would like to hear what he would have made of the title part). As Pietro the young bass Carlo Colombara does much with little. Then Aragall has done nothing better on record than this bitingly clear really Italianate Gabriele: he catches very weil the impetuous headstrong nature of the young nobleman, and is also able to fine away his big voice to the needs of his love duet with Amelia. Even so, he isn't superior to his fellow-Spaniards Domingo (RCA) and especially Carreras (DG), whose phrasing is even longer-breathed than Aragall's, but Aragall's rightly fierce and heroic singing is very much of an asset on the new Decca set.
When it comes to the three other main roles, I cannot pretend the Decca artists match their rivals. Dame Kiri is probably the best of the trio. She sings with her customary beauty and fullness of tone, phrases sensitively and often with feeling as can be heard in the lift she gives to her opening aria hymning the breezes. But I miss the breadth of line of Freni (DG) and even more the peculiar sense of vulnerability and girlishness that is Ricciarelli's special gift (RCA). Nucci's involved and involving Boccanegra would be welcome enough were Cappuccilli's overwhelming performance for Abbado not there to show how much more inward many of the Doge's utterances can sound (not to forget Gobbi on the old deleted EMI scheduled for CD reissue in due course). When you compare the two baritones, it is immediately evident that whereas Cappuccilli's marvellously steady and perfectly focused tone is made for the part, Nucci too often seems to be singing up to the limit of his possibilities and sometimes beyond them. If you want to be convinced beyond any doubt of Cappucdlli's superiority listen to either the ''Figlia tale nome palpito'' section of Boccanegra's duet with Amelia or to the ''Piango su voi'' appeal of the Doge in the Council Chamber scene, both are marked con espressione and both baritones sing them that way, but Cappuccilli brings to each far more variety of colour and a steadier line.
Similarly, Cappucilli's authority and bite in his encounters with Fiesco, in the Prologue and in the Third Act, are far ahead of Nucci's in both, but then he is singing on DG opposite the experienced and authoritative Fiesco of Ghiaurov, a long-time partnership on stage. Nucci is faced with the raw bull-in-a-china-shop Fiesco of Burchuladze, singing with very little feeling for a Verdi phrase, attacking notes from below and pitching quite a few out of tune. It is astounding that any sensitive artist could sing Fiesco's great lament in the Prologue with so little sense of its eloquent accents and its desperate situation. One wonders if Decca had considered our own Robert Lloyd, Gwynne Howell and John Tomlinson, all notable Fiescos, or, if they chose to have a foreign star, of Kurt Moll, whom I recently heard take the part superbly in Munich opposite Cappuccilli.
I wish I could find a saving grace in Solti's conducting, but beside Abbado's it often sounds stodgy and stiff-limbed. Too often the rhythms are lax and the tempos on the slow side that for Gabriele's aria isn't much slower than Abbado's, but where Abbado, with the same orchestra, makes the passage flow, here it simply makes the aria sound dull because the pulse isn't sustained. Elsewhere there is the familiar Solti thrust, but the overall shaping of each scene is also much more assured on the DG. The Abbado derives from the famous Strehler/La Scala production of the late 1970s, but Solti had also given concert performances at La Scala before making this recording. However, the move to studios in his case seems to have led to a drop in dramatic temperature.
I happened to make some of my comparisons with a friend who's an amateur musician and opera-aware. Before I had given my opinion, he summed up both our reactions succinctly—the Decca set is workaday, the DG is inspired. which is I suppose what may happen when you attempt to challenge one of the great Verdi recordings of all time. Even were that unavailable, I would have to prefer the Gavazeni, where he evinces his long experience in Verdi and his Serafin-like control of the work. It isn't as vivid as Abbado's, and suffers from Raimondi's insecure Fiesco, but it sounds to me more idiomatic, more loving than the new Solti—''an arresting, powerful, and beautiful performance'', in Andrew Porter's words. I regret that the new one is none of these things.'