A notable jewel from the list is Sinopoli's Rigoletto, with Edita Gruberova an exceptionally fine Gilda and Renato Bruson an unusually somber and thoughtful hunchback.
What else? Well, there's Joan Sutherland's first recording of Norma, with the excellent but less renowned Marilyn Horne as Adalgisa, and John Alexander and Richard Cross as the male leads.
Also with Sutherland is La Traviata, again not her only recording of this work. This version is with Carlo Bergonzi as Alfredo and Robert Merrill as his father Germont. Sutherland also appears in the series in Gounod's Faust, albeit no one's favorite opera, with Corelli and Ghiaurov.
There's plenty more. There's a Don Giovanni, for instance, with Bernd Weikl -- more usually associated with Wagner -- as the Don, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Solti, and a Le Nozze di Figaro with Van Dam, Hendricks, Raimondi, Popp and Baltsa under Marriner, both items enthusiasts will be happy to add to their collections, though neither will be many people's first choice for the works in question.
Puccini is of course not to be excluded from a series like this. The well-worn Madama Butterfly with Tebaldi and Bergonzi is, despite its age, considered by many opera professionals to be incomparable, and there's also the same two soloists' version of La Boheme. Each has Tullio Serafin conducting Rome's Orchestra and Choir of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, and so ensuring an authentic Italian approach.
Montserrat Caballe graces the series with her presence in the form of her Lucia di Lammermoor and Ballo in Maschera, both with Jose Carreras. There is in addition the very distinguished Hansel and Gretel with Fassbaender, Popp, Berry, Gruberova and the Vienna Philharmonic under Solti, long the market leader for this one-of-a-kind work.
Also re-issued here are Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci from Pretre and the forces of La Scala, Milan (with Domingo, Bruson, Obraztsova, Stratas).
The former, however, has always seemed somewhat dull in sound to me, despite -- or perhaps because of -- being the original soundtrack of Zeffirelli's film of the opera. And Elena Obraztsova, although an incomparable singer of the songs of her compatriot Tchaikovsky, will for some sound slightly too full-voiced for the newly-married young Santuzza.
All in all, this is a fine collection, impressively packaged. Decca's claim that theirs is a newly slim way of presenting opera recordings sounds a strange note. The Karajan Ring operas, for instance, are slimmer, even though they include the complete texts in booklet form.
Full details of the series can be found at www.deccaclassics.com/compactoperacollection.
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