Sony Classical is pleased to offer lovers of great singing classic complete opera sets from the LP era, all drawn from the incomparable RCA Victor catalogue and remastered from the original tapes to sound better than ever.

This is famous 1953 RCA recording of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, starring three of the greatest singers of the day: Zinka Milanov, Jussi Björling and Robert Merrill. Gramophone’s reviewer exclaimed in 1988: “Who today, or in any day, fills Mascagni’s grateful phrases with quite such full, lustrous tone and with such a wealth of feeling for the text as Milanov? This is verismo singing on the grandest, most authentic scale … Like his soprano, Björling’s singing is an exemplar of the spinto style at its best. As Alfio, Merrill turns in one of his most considerable performances on disc.”

The recording features Renato Cellini conducting the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra with the Robert Shaw Chorale, and features singers Zinka Milanov, Jussi Björling, Robert Merrill.