A compilation rather than a complete opera, and one that ages me. In the 1980s, DG issued a series of compilations called Walkman Classics, a cassette-only series that I would imagine nobody actually listened to via the suggested technology. The Mozart Opera cassette was the first opera of any kind I bought for myself — I must have been twelve or so. It featured selections from the Bohm recordings of Nozze, Don Giovanni (the live Salzburg version from the 70s with Milnes and co.), Così, and Zauberflöte. It’s a key moment in my Janowitz Origin Story, obviously, and the version of “Soave sia il vento” was the reason that Così became, as it remains, pretty much my favorite opera, if such things can be said to exist.

These versions imprinted on me, as early memories tend to, to the extent that I still get a little surprised if a Fiordiligi doesn’t let out a dramatic wail between her sister’s verses of “Smanie implaccabili,” as happens here. But the performance which inspired the most discussion and induced the most admiration the countless times I insisted my cassette be played on family car journeys, was Roberta Peters‘s rendition of the second QOTN aria. Other queens have been richer of voice or more dramatically compelling, but none I have ever heard succeeds in sounding something other than human. In the arpeggiated section Peters sounds like a machine, which is somehow even scarier than some of the fuller-throated versions.