Decca: 4759385

Puccini Great Opera Collection

2008 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Puccini (22 December). Decca’s recordings of Puccini’s operas rank among the very finest ever committed to disc. This legacy was started in 1951 when Renata Tebaldi made her first recording of Madama Butterfly and throughout the rest of the 1950s Tebaldi recorded Puccini’s other major operas. At the end of the 1950s new stereo versions were made of Madama Butterfly and La Bohème. Tebaldi was cast alongside such distinguished colleagues as Carlo Bergonzi and Mario del Monaco and acclaimed opera maestri at the helm of these recordings include Francesco Molinari-Pradelli and Tullio Serafin. This collection of the great Puccini operas includes the stereo versions of Butterfly and Bohème and is the ideal collection of some of the world’s most popular and enduring operas in acclaimed recordings that have been an integral part of Decca’s legendary opera catalogue for the past fifty years.