...Sony has restored some great singing to the catalog. Eileen Farrell offers vocalism of extraordinary ease, power, and presence. If I had to single out just one more thing that warrants really sitting up and taking note, it would need to be the seamlessness with which the voice is produced. This is stunningly even singing; one listens in vain for any sign of a break between registers. And I must also call attention to the limpidity of tone in the opening Boccanegra aria, and the well-considered approach to the recitativelike passages of “Ritorna vincitor.“ On the other hand, one cannot help but hear a certain sameness in many of the arias, a sameness that necessarily reflects her limited experience on the operatic stage. (A much-admired Puccini album, not yet reissued, apparently demonstrates a wider interpretive range than the present selection of Verdi arias.) Farrell was already thirty-six when she made her operatic debut in 1956, and she sang just five roles in her five seasons at the Met, where she first appeared in 1960. A Met Gioconda and a Forza from Philadelphia are preserved on CD. But she was unhappy in the world of opera; according to Philip Kennicott's accompanying essay she often found the genre superficial and contrived and simply did not care to face an opening-night audience. Ultimately she concentrated her efforts on concert appearances and more popular venues, so this Verdi disc is, in Kennicott's words, “a document of what was not to be.“

-- Marc Mandel, FANFARE [5/1997]