‘Still a great show,’ says the radio announcer Milton Cross, who in his time had no doubt seen many a greater. More than 20 years had passed since Caruso’s time, during which the role of Canio at the Met had been essentially Martinelli’s; and he invested the part with such breadth of phrase and intensity of utterance that the opera itself was ennobled. The French-Canadian, Raoul Jobin, became the first to follow him, a singer with a very different background. He had a fine, well-produced voice and his performance carries conviction, but the concentrated passion (in both the general and literal sense) is not in him, nor is the feeling for Italian words and their declamation. His principal associates in the cast do little to raise the artistic level of the performance, though both were strong vocal personalities and well-established favourites with the audience. Licia Albanese had definite ideas about the role of Nedda, outlined in the booklet-essay, but to judge from her singing this precludes a feeling of joy and serenity in her waltz-song: the tone hardens and the manner is charmless, almost fierce. Leonard Warren provides such a generous, house-filling volume of sound, with so free and brilliant an upper register, that to hear him in the flesh must have been a mightily impressive experience; but recording shows up the unevenness of his production, the notes distinctly less finely textured than those of his predecessors on record from the Met, Tibbett and Bonelli – or, for that matter, than the somewhat patriarchal Silvio of this performance, Francesco Valentino.
As a company-production it is more satisfying. The chorus sings cleanly and well, and conveys a vivid sense of dramatic involvement. The orchestra, too, is remarkably spirited and accurate, Sodero conducting with alert responsiveness to his singers. The quality of recorded sound varies but is often startlingly clear. Readers of Paul Jackson’s Saturday Afternoons at the Old Met (Duckworth: 1991) will wisely consult that invaluable work, but will find only excerpts under review: the complete broadcast was discovered later in Raoul Jobin’s collection, bequeathed to the National Library of Canada.'