Fonit Cetra CDC 75 (in It.)	EMI CBCD 54810 (in Fr.)
Zerlina	Luciana Serra	Mady Mesplé
Pamela	Martine Dupuy	Jane Berbié
Fra Diavolo	Dano Raffanti	Nicolai Gedda
Lorenzo	Aldo Bertolo	Thierry Dran
Lord Rochburg	Nelson Portella	Remy Corzza
Conductor	Alberto Zedda	Marc Soustrot

With the exception of die-hard fans of Gedda or Mesplé, I would unhesitangly recommend the Italian version with Dano Raffanti and Luciana Serra, Partly for its' clearly superior singing on the part of the supporting cast, for boasting the presence of a Dano Raffanti at his very best, and finally for all the extra music contained in that version.

Musically, Fra Diavolo is a sheer delight. It had been standard repertory all over the civilized world throughout the nineteenth century, and did not start to vanish until the 1900s began. Strnagely, France was the first country to see it go--perhaps because of their whole-hearted acceptance of Wagnerism, which caused musical "intellectuals" in that country to be embarrassed by their own musical heritage--an embarassment that seems to have has lasted until this day. The work remained quite popular in its' Italian version (which was generally used Internationally), and even more so in German speaking countries. In fact, some of the most famous excerpts from the work on 78 rpm records (arias by Hermann Jadlowker and Helge Rosswaenge, couplets by Karl Burrian) were sung in German, as was the first complete recording on LP. Lina Pagliughi also recorded some arias in Italian.

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