Jussi Bjorling: Opera Arias

Jussi Björling was one of the strongest and steeliest lyric tenors of the 20th century, as famous for his Rodolfo in La Boheme as he was for his Calaf in Turandot. This superbly engineered survey of his early career takes us from 1936 to 1948, and covers, for the most part, his standard repertoire of French and Italian music--extracts from Aida and from Faust, and from both Massenet's Manon and Puccini's Manon Lescaut. He was a singer equally at home with the elegances of bel canto and with the passionate sorrows of verismo--he is particularly fine in "Vesti la guibbia" from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. Björling was always going to have to struggle to make this repertoire his own--much of his early audience had heard Caruso. What Björling brought to his roles was a superb theatricality and a capacity for thoughtful passion; amid the lyricism, you also always remembered that his heroes were for the most part tough guys. --Roz Kaveney