Cavalleria Rusticana

Jussi Bjoerling is the one who makes the magic happen in this Cavalleria Rusticana with a finely worked-out profile of Turiddu, as well as some matchless singing. Zinka Milanov also sings beautifully, but she will never convince anyone that she is a simple Sicilian peasant girl who has been seduced with a false promise of marriage, impregnated, and disdainfully abandoned by a tenor who hardly even bothers pretending to be nice. The rest of the cast comes across well--notably Robert Merrill--and Renato Cellini does a polished (too polished?) job on the podium. Herbert von Karajan's chief advantage in competition with this set is that his sound is technically much better. Cellini's big advantage (other than Bjoerling) is that you don't have to buy I Pagliacci to get Cavalleria Rusticana. --Joe McLellan