This is a great re-issue from the "Golden Age" of studio recordings. The stand out is "Show Boat". It's perhaps not the greatest "dramatic recreation" of this great operetta that foreshadowed the modern musical (one would never see Robert Merrill sing "Ol' Man River" in the role on stage), but the voices are just ravishing. The duets between Merrill and Peters are gorgeous, and Rise Stevens' renditions of "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" and "Bill" are stunners, they take your breath away. You don't normally associate a sultry, sexy performance like this with an opera singer. I love Helen Morgan's classic performance of these songs, but I've never been able to get Stevens' performance out of my head since I first heard it back in the 60's.Merrill's performance of "Ol Man River" is admittedly problematic and a bit jarring at first; one doesn't expect to hear a white man sing this great "negro" ballad. But, dang it, it's probably one of the finest versions of the song ever recorded. He had one of the best American operatic forces of the twentieth century. (There's a reason why he was Harry Truman's favorite singer of "The Star Spangled Banner").It probably helps if you mentally remove the song from the show and think of it as a stand-alone "studio" performance, much like Frank Sinatra's.This is the first time I've ever heard a recording of "Rose-Marie". I;d only seen the Jeannette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy movie of the 1930s. It's difficult that this was the longest running operetta/musical of the early twenties on both Broadway and the West End (and seemed to run forever in France). Hearing it for the first time, the score seems thoroughly forgettable, other than the title song and "indian Love Call". For me, it doesn't stand up to other great operettas from this period, like "the Desert Song" and "The Student Prince". Perhaps it will grow on me with further hearing.It's certainly worth buying just to hear Julie Andrews -well, at least for historical purposes. Her voice, as always, is great, but it just doesn't seem right for some reason. It's seems more suited to the musical than operetta. It probably explains why this is one of the few recordings of this nature she made and why Roberta Peters had a second career recording shows from this era.The comedy songs, which were a mainstay of operettas (and even musicals), are performed fantastically by the British-Yiddish entertainer, Meier Tzelniker, but they're certainly jarring to current ears (or, at least, mine). Yiddish theater has a great history, and ethnic humor was a mainstay of early twentieth century theater, but the exaggerated accent today strikes today's listeners a little bit too much like some of the depictions of blacks do in 1930-1940 movies. It's obviously a bit of culture shock. Yiddish theater was an honorable part of the Jewish heritage; its use in the popular theater of the time is more problematical. But it's a historical recording. It is what it was.** Just as it's startling at first to hear John McGlinn's great recording of "Show Boat" where he opted for historical reason in using the original "N" word in the opening of "Ol' Man River" ("N-----s all work on the Mississippi/N-----s all work while da white folk play"). It is what it was.