“This collection shows how directly he transplants Lieder-style into another genre…on the Mozart side the results are both convincing and intensely memorable. Fischer-Dieskau has twice recorded the part of Papageno, these earlier Fricsay versions have been preferred to the later Bohm …and in the Don Giovanni items….the Don’s Champagne Aria and Serenade are more mellifluous…. the two extracts from Falstaff, infinitely resourceful, mercurial performances from his Verdi recital -how refreshing to hear Verdi sung on the assumption that there is intelligent, as well as emotional, lyrical and rhetorical, sense to be made.”
-Gramophone
