This English-language Abduction, first released in 1968, has a lot to recommend it. The Bath Festival Orchestra plays with grace and charm, and Yehudi Menuhin's absolutely honest and correct approach to Mozart makes you ponder on what a pity it is that he avoided opera throughout his long career. Tempos are ideally judged, the "Turkish" music is properly raucous, the wind players are first rate (and nicely recorded--as is everything else), and Menuhin seems to breathe with the singers. Nicolai Gedda is a wonderful, graceful Belmonte, and he almost escapes from his last-act aria ("Ich baue ganz") unharmed. Elsewhere he's close to perfect, and oddly, in this entirely (except for Gedda) native English-speaking cast, his diction is clearest.

Mattiwilda Dobbs makes a nice Constanza, with plenty of temperament and a good enough technique. You only wish for a bit more weight and would prefer that the long-held high-C in "Martern aler arten" ("Tortures unrelenting") were on, rather than painfully right under, the note. Jenifer Eddy's Blonda is the usual pert, knowing gal, and her Pedrillo, John Fryatt, is pretty good, although he sounds slightly older than Pedrillo ought to be. Noel Mangin is a good, comic Osmin, hardly menacing (this is all rather comic-bookish), but with all the notes, and David Kelsey speaks Pasha Selim's lines with conviction. If you want an Abduction in English (heaven knows why you might), obviously this is it; otherwise, despite its niceties, it's a respectable show and about third or fourth down on the list of Entfuhrungs on the market.

--Robert Levine