Riccardo Muti's 1974 studio recording on EMI, with Caballé, Cossotto and Domingo, has been one of the steady recommendations for this work on CD. This live account from 1979 in many, but not all ways, surpasses the studio performance.
In the first place, Muti's reading has matured to the extent of being less wilful – for instance, his tempo for the closing scene's 'O terra addio' is the better for being more orthodox – and even more persuasive in terms of fulfilling Verdi's exacting demands on all concerned.
Seldom can the full panoply and subtlety of the composer's scoring, especially the wonderful wind writing, have been so clearly expounded. The chorus is also commendable in every respect.
Domingo, fine enough on EMI, here gives possibly his most responsive and exciting Radames on disc and that's saying something. In tremendous voice, he produces magic towards the end of 'Celeste Aida' with the triple pianissimo Verdi asks for but seldom gets, and throughout he make every effort to fulfil Verdi's demand for dolce and pp effects. It hardly needs saying that he was at the time at the peak of his amazing powers.
Tomowa-Sintow provides most of the heft combined with sensibility that the title part calls for.
Although she can't manage Caballé's many exquisite moments when she floats her tone on high, she has the firmer, stronger voice to ride the orchestra at climactic moments. You don't quite feel the strong identification with the part that Fassbaender undoubtedly gives to her first Amneris. Fassbaender is very much her idiosyncratic, wholly compelling self, rising to heights of music-drama in Amneris's great Act 4 scene, the repeated 'io stessa… lo getta' rending the heart. This is an interpretation to savour.
The recording, although the voices are sometimes a little distanced, catches the high excitement of a first night in the opera house. Applause is never intrusive, scenery change only once so.
This is as gripping an account of the piece of any on disc.