Orfeo here rounds up once more a production’s cast long known to collectors in both sound (numerous dealer labels) and vision (see YouTube). Even if Gustavo’s, Renato’s and the maestro’s interpretations can be sampled elsewhere with other artists, this October 1986 live performance from the Staatsoper was well worth making official from original tapes.

Pavarotti mavens will not need reminding that this is one of their man’s greatest roles. And he was on some form this evening, fearless in the high tessitura of the ‘Teco io sto’ duet, while everywhere that unique catch in the voice suggests the frustration and desire essential to Gustavo’s character. Yet does the tenor – despite Abbado’s painstaking dynamic sensitivity – sing too much too loudly compared with, say, Björling or Domingo? Maybe, but it’s hard to carp.

While Bruson tended to be the more recorded Renato of the 1980s (including for Abbado’s 1981 DG La Scala recording), Cappuccilli offers a more aristocratic and perhaps nastier character. The Austrian soprano Gabriele Lechner, only 25 at the time, had taken over Amelia at short notice from Margaret Price during the first run of the production the previous year. She now sounds thoroughly accustomed to both role and colleagues and is ‘adequate’ in the German sense of that word – comfortable, and doing everything required – but rather neutral alongside Katia Ricciarelli’s special passion for Abbado in Milan.

As on that recording with the then ubiquitous Elena Obraztsova, Abbado opts for a large Slavic voice as Ulrica. Schemtschuk certainly fills the role sound wise, but just hop back to Giulietta Simionato on Solti’s 1960 Rome recording (the one Björling didn’t quite make) to see what extra juice an Italian voice brings. Magda Nádor – once to be heard on Harnoncourt’s recording of Der Schauspieldirektor – is a serviceable but not special Oscar.

The second hero of this performance is Claudio Abbado, who piles on the tension without ever pressing too much (a fault, perhaps, of both the Solti sets, the second of which has Pavarotti in fine voice, and Margaret Price). The thickish sound delivered by the ORF broadcast here makes Abbado’s interpretation sound louder and heavier than the DG set while remaining within the same basic approach to each number. There’s no shortage of emotion but little sentimentality – except in the retention of (most of?) the generous applause, which is simply de trop for repeated listening.

I would place this set very high up the recommendable list for this opera, alongside the studio Abbado, the less evenly cast Warner Muti set (both these with Domingo) and the important historics under Panizza (Sony, with Björling) and Toscanini (perhaps the most ‘classically’ pure).