The cast here is not as starry as La Scala’s, but it’s at a high professional level. Rita Shane (Marguerite) sings out with full, healthy tone and rhythmic alacrity, and goes fearlessly into the high extension. She does not contact the chest voice any more than does Sutherland, but she at least touches the written notes, as opposed to cooking up her own. Jeanette Scovotti brings her pretty coloratura voice and a dashing attack to Urbain, with some sparky interpolated flourishes and high options. Her flashy top line in the Act 1 finale makes it clear that high soprano is what’s intended here, and why. (And of all the passages in the opera that we can say are premonitory of something in Verdi or even Wagner, the resemblance here to the Scene 1 finale of Ballo in Maschera is the most obvious—a peppy ensemble crowned by a high-soprano page, in which the hero is dispatched, disguised or blindfolded, on a mission to an exotic destination. Verdi did it better, but this is not without its effect.) The Valentine is Enriqueta Tarrés, a lyrico-spinto soprano with an attractive timbre but a careful approach to both ends of the range. She is a soprano while Simionato is not, but Simionato is by some distance the more complete singer.

Justino Diaz brings to Marcel the good-quality, technically firm instrument that always hovered somewhere between basso cantante and Heldenbariton. (I remember thinking he should give the Dutchman or Wotan a try, but evidently they were not in his ethnolinguistic wheelhouse.) He sings reliably, but with not enough imagination to counter the fact that the voice doesn’t sit quite right on the music. He, too, is not happy in the low range, where Marcel lives a good share of the time; by way of compensation, he tosses in a high G at the end of “Piff! Paff!.” Dimiter Petkov is St. Bris—a powerful-sounding voice of approximately the appropriate weight, deployed with little inflectional or dynamic variety. Pedro Farres, the Nevers, has a strong, rattley bass-baritone and not much of an idea about how to shape what’s left of his music. All the men in this show seem to think that a loud interpolated high note or two would be just the thing to put it across. You can decide for yourself.

Which brings me to Nicolai Gedda, whose Raoul is the organizing principle of the performance. And in some important ways he is a more logical choice for this role than Corelli, or any other tenor of the time. He sings French well, and with a lean tone and observant musicianship we think of as “in style” for roles like Faust, Des Grieux, Hoffmann, Werther, and Roméo, for all of which he was rightly admired. And he is in fresh, responsive voice here, attempting many of the effects that are indicated, notably a well-controlled mezza-voce (or at least a held-back dynamic) on those lofty Act 4 phrases. He can choose, and execute, some high options that Corelli would not attempt. And he throws himself into the writing with enormous energy. Yet it is often an energy devoted to vocal feats for their own sakes, ramming through the lines with jagged accents and many plosive h’s, occasionally relieved by an unpressurized lyricism that one wishes had been the rule rather than the exception. It’s all rather wearying, especially as closely miked. Of course, it must be said that he did learn and sing all the notes of his part.