Marguerite (or, rather, Margarita): Joan Sutherland is here in her early prime, which is to say that for beauty and body of tone, freedom of action, easy reach into the upper extension, and (for a high soprano) unforced volume, she is in a separate category from all other modern singers of her type. By 1962, however, she was a couple of years into her vocal readjustment in a more “covered” direction, and singing in Italian to boot, thus already revealing some of the hot-potato-in-mouth timbre and slightly slackened engagement that tended to muffle words and color all expression a nice, restful grey. Comparison with her earlier studio recording (on the two-LP “Prima Donna album”) of the double aria, in French (the only comparison that would be to her disfavor), shows this—you need hear only the opening phrase (“O beau pays de la Touraine”/”O vago suol della Turena”) to discern the difference. Throughout the brief role, she rewrites many of the lower lines upward, not to make any improvement in effect, but to avoid entering chest-register, open-vowel territory. I don’t know what to say of her work in the subsequent scene with Raoul. On one hand, she captures a playful, teasing quality. On the other, she misses the color that would make clear that this is all an aside (“If I were the sort  of woman . . .”). But then, there’s no one to keep it aside from, because (according to one of the few revelatory moments in Sutherland’s autobiography), Franco Corelli had not allotted sufficient time to learn his own music here (chattery, staccato, with a short high C out of nowhere—hmm), so she’s left warbling away on her own; the scene doesn’t happen. A ridiculous situation in any professional opera company, and a large blot on the Corelli escutcheon.^(I)

Urbain/Urbano: Fiorenza Cossotto was in fine youthful fettle here, not yet presenting herself in the major dramatic roles. (She had recorded Laura in the second Callas Gioconda—very well sung, but in truth somewhat light and narrow if the Elmo/Barbieri/Simionato/Resnik calibre is the gauge.) Interpolated sopracuti apart, she sweeps through the “Nobil donna” with good tone and impetus, if not a lot of nuance, and deals securely with the upper line in the Act 1 finale. (I do wonder what the old contraltos did here. As many recordings show, the song can work well in transposition, but the writing in the finale is quite beyond even a great contralto; downward rewrites would lose much of the piquancy; and there’s no other female voice to swap lines with.)