Puccini Without Words - Highlights from La Bohème, Madama Butterfuly, Tosca / Puccini Without Words - Highlights from La Boheme, Madama Butterfuly, Tosca

OK, so it's easy listening music, but Kostelanetz and his orchestra bring an added luster to this most lyrical of all composers that makes this CD almost intoxicating — the perfect accompaniment to a romantic dinner (especially if you've already run through your Sinatra collection), unless your partner happens to be a serious opera aficionado, in which case she or he will be driven to distraction by the absence of any singing where it's supposed to be. Seriously, Columbia has done a superb job with the sound on this CD, so good that it's almost an embarrassment in light of the way they botched several rounds of Leonard Bernstein and George Szell reissues (not to mention Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan CDs) before getting them right. And the music itself is beautiful enough in its own right that, even in this light classical incarnation, one cannot complain. And along with his recordings of the Aaron Copland A Lincoln Portrait and the William Schuman New England Triptych with the New York Philharmonic, this CD may be the best representation of Kostelanetz's art that one can find on CD.