Her Greatest Roles Review
Since Price's retirement from the stage, there has been no really fine Verdi soprano to take her place: If you want proof, listen to the first of these two CDs and hear her Aida, her two Leonoras, her Elvira, and her Amelia--no-one has come near her sense of line, phrasing, control, and the utter loveliness of her sound. The second CD finds her as Butterfly (a bit gross for my taste), Fiordiligi (ditto--and she misreads or mis-sings Mozart's instructions in the long roulade up to and past the high C), Manon Lescaut (beautiful but dumb), Donna Anna (fine), Liu (gorgeous), Ariadne (a knockout), Cleopatra (sui generis), Tosca (blah but elegant), and Poulenc's Madame Lidoine (imperious). A mixed bag, but that Verdi stuff is dynamite. --Robert Levine. Read more...
