Certainly it seems like the remastering process has improved the recordings at least a little. The recordings have all been remastered in high-resolution technology I haven’t seen detailed comparisons of the old CD versions, but most of them were first released on CD in the ’80s, when digital remastering technology was a new and haphazard thing it sounds to me like the Turandot, whose original CD issue came out in 1984, sounds more like it did on LP (and this was one of the greatest-sounding recordings ever made), but I don’t have that CD issue any more so I can’t say for sure.

But I found the collection at L’Atelier Grigorian in Toronto for about $94 Amazon.ca has it for $84, but on backorder one way or another it comes to less than $20 per set, which isn’t a bad deal for starting a Puccini opera collection, particularly since four of the five recordings are good, and the fifth ( Tosca) is at least competent.

Which is sort of too bad, because only one of the five recordings represented here, Turandot, is my very favourite for that particular piece, and I’d have preferred to get it separately. Of the five remastered sets, only one - the La Bohème conducted by Herbert Von Karajan - is available separately. Decca is calling their new 11-CD collection “Puccini: The Definitive Collection,” but really it’s a tribute to the label’s superstar, the late Luciano Pavarotti: remastered, repackaged recordings of five Puccini operas, recorded at different times in different places, but all of them starring Pavarotti.

Puccini opera popularized by pavarotti