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Verdi: Otello. Ramón Vinay (Otello), Paul Schöffler (Iago), Dragica (Carla) Martinis (Desdemona), Anton Dermota (Cassio), August Jaresch (Roderigo), Josef Greindl (Lodovico), Georg Monthy (Montano), Franz Bierbach (Un Araldo), Sieglinde Wagner (Emilia). Vienna State Opera Chorus and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler (Recorded live at the Salzburg Festival 7 August 1951). Orfeo D'Or C 880 132 1 (2 CDs).
In the mid-1990s the Salzburg Festival began authorizing editions of live performances in a "Festspieldokumente" series, all bearing the official "Salzburger Festspiele" logo. The releases have involved several CD labels, including Orfeo, EMI, Deutsche Grammophon and Sony Classical, the latter three concentrating on conductors they had under contract during the times the performances took place. In general, these "official" releases offer sound quality superior to the many bootleg editions that have circulated on LP and CD, drawing on primary sources from the Austrian Radio archives and the best possible off-the-air sources when in-house radio recordings no longer exist. The DG releases in this series include performances by Herbert von Karajan and Karl Böhm while Sony's feature Dimitri Mitropoulos and George Szell. EMI has issued several performances by Wilhelm Furtwängler, including Beethoven's Fidelio from 1950 (CHS 7 649012), Verdi's Otello from 1951 (CHS 5 657512), and three Mozart operas including Le nozze di Figaro from 1953 (CHS 5 660802), Don Giovanni from 1950 (CHS 5 665672), and Die Zauberflöte from 1951 (CHS 5 653562). More recently, those releases have been complemented by Orfeo editions of the 1949 Die Zauberflöte (C650053D) and 1953 Don Giovanni (C624043D). EMI's 1991 CD edition of the 1954 Don Giovanni (CHS 7 638602) was not part of the Festspieldokumente series.
Orfeo's new edition of the 1951 Otello is the second remastering of that performance to be offered in the Festspieldokumente series and the only case where a second attempt has been made on a previously released performance. The Verdi centennial aside, there was good reason for doing so. EMI's 1995 transfer was badly equalized, with little or no bass and a screechy upper mid-range, and the AM radio source was plagued by gainriding, dynamic compression and distortion. Gottfried Krauss and Othmar Eichinger were responsible for remastering both the EMI and the new Orfeo editions, and they have taken a completely fresh approach...