https://www.discogs.com/release/4269294
A mono record. I don’t get the people that want to hear the Beatles on mono because it was the way they supposedly recorded it. And the way it was heard from little old radios. I don’t share that nostalgia. I believe in good sound, not old rubbish. So yes, a big part of my collection is not up to my own demands, including this one.
That said, of course, Händel wrote some beautiful operas, and Julius Caesar is certainly one of them. Dame Sutherland has one of the best voices in opera history. I think the recordings she did with her husband Richard Bonynge for Decca are among the best that were ever produced. Does it make up for the lack of sound depth? Kind of. That’s why this record is still in my collection.
This is the last of the batch I got from the friend of my sister. There was more (I remember a recording of Telemanns der Getreue Musikmeister), but they were too damaged. Also old.
They were damaged because I had a leaking faucet, and the records found themselves in a puddle of water that spread in the carpet. The water seeped into the covers, and stayed there a while before I discovered it. When I did, fungus was all over it, and it had that dusky cellar smell we like when visiting wine cellar, but not so much when visiting a library.
I could salvage some, but others were just too much damaged, or not good enough for a better treatment. There always was a bit of fungus left in the grooves.
Fungus in the grooves! Good name for a band.