I Puritani : Muti / Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Deutekom, Gedda, Bruscantini, etc (1970 Monaural)(2CD)

At twenty-nine and half years old Muti conducted for the first time in a theatre an opera universally recognized as a masterpiece. It definitively confirmed his status as an eminent interpreter, leading to his debut in Salzburg the following summer, with Gaetano Donizettis Don Pasquale. The Bel Canto renaissance was still in a settling-in phase, and was unknown to many audiences. But all of the cast were certainly admirable. First and foremost Gedda, likewise Cristina Deutekom; what we came to almost scold then is what seems today - and seemed then to those led astray by improbable prejudices - one of her most distinguished virtues, that is the almost instrumental exactness of the coloratura, which sublimates the virtuosity to psychological definition, and a coloring that has nothing of the dramatic agility perhaps regretted by some (Maria Callas in 1970 was still a benchmark) and which is actually appropriate for the naive, adolescent character of Elvira, in a performance studded with stunning high notes inserted in more than one of the many places where Bellini left open the possibility.