I believe the excerpted review from "The Rough Guide" refers to the EMI edition, which is the one I have. If Opera d'Oro's sound at least matches that of EMI (which is close to that heard in the Toscanini broadcast on RCA, also with Vinay, from around the same time), this recording is well worth having -- especially at this price.One simply must hear Vinay in this role, and this could be a supurb alternate to any modern recording you may own. Actually, you could well come to regard it as your first choice. Furtwangler shapes the opera as though it were a dark, luminous tone poem, and of all Verdi's work this surely comes the closest to the Wagnerian ideal of music drama: "Wort und Ton."