Beyond our two leads, this performance has much to recommend it. Lescaut is a hard part to make much of. Musically and vocally, it’s little more than a series of generic baritone gestures —Massenet found this character in his music much more persuasively than did Puccini. So it’s what we’d call a “personality part,” which is just the sort in which Frank Guarrera made himself valuable to the Met for a couple of decades. His medium-calibre, virile baritone, upon which heavy demands were made over time by his status as “house baritone,” is still in responsive condition, and he gives constant life to what he does. Fernando Corena, like his predecessor as premier basso buffo Salvatore Baccaloni, moves into the decidedly un-clownish personage of Geronte to full effect: there is a touch of the ridiculous and pompous, but he doesn’t much play to that, and in the large, mordant tone and peremptory pronuncia, there is plenty of the man who, if crossed, will not be trifled with.

In Act 1 we have as Edmondo the excellent Thomas Hayward, whom I gave positive attention to in my recent comments on the Reiner/Varnay/Hotter Fliegende Holländer, and will say more about when we come to the Peter Grimes broadcasts; in Act 2 there is the first-quality mezzo of Rosalind Elias (whom we have just lost) as the solo madrigalist; and in Act 3, we hear both the fine baritone of Calvin Marsh as the Sergeant and the latent Otello (but applying himself to his “character” assignment) of James McCracken as the Lamplighter—coincidentally, the part in which Jussi Björling had many years earlier made his professional operatic debut in Stockholm. There’s a secondary-role lineup for you.

Mitropoulos, as both expected and remembered, conducts a performance of great vitality, propulsive without being pushed, always alive to the value of rubato and to the phrasing predilections of his singers. He captures the dark, emotionally pregnant tone of the Intermezzo, and the chilling, doom-laden orchestral surge at the opening and end of Act 4, so evocative of the barren hopelessness of the “Louisiana desert,” but also of the towering peaks of the Sierras when we hear its almost identical twin in Fanciulla. The sound conveys only suggestions of the reading’s impact, though, of its sonority and color, and I’m not sure why. There’s much more of that in the Mitropolous Forza del destino from the Maggio Musicale, or the Tebaldi/Tucker/Warren/Mitropoulos Met Tosca, both in the same timeframe. Here, the sound is exceptionally clear and free of artifacts, and can surely be listened to with pleasure. But it is also on the bright, shallow side. St. Laurent has a good reputation for its restorations, and since I have not heard other releases from them, or compared this one with earlier editions of this performance, I am reluctant to comment further. At points, it sounds as if the radio technicians were monitoring the dynamic high points pretty closely, and maybe this is all that can be gotten from the source. In any case, unless audiophile sound is your make-or-break priority (and if it is, why would you be acquiring this?), don’t let these reservations stand in your way.

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NEXT TIME: In two weeks (Friday, May 22), I’ll be catching up with my promised thoughts on Peter Grimes and Carmen, while scheming for my next full post, which I’ll announce then.

Be well, all.

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