The appeal of Naxos' The Best of Opera, Vol. 3, will depend on the purchaser's expectations. For the listener simply looking to listen to music whose common denominator is that it was all taken from operas, this CD should generally work fine. The listener interested in more detail, such as the identity of the performers, will be disappointed; it's surprising that a label as meticulous and user-friendly as Naxos would produce a CD that offers no indication of the performers. It does list the Naxos catalog number for the release from which each excerpt was taken, but tracking down the information on the CD and figuring out from its credits who is singing and which orchestra is playing is more work than any but the most highly motivated listener is likely to be willing to do. Then again, this type of compilation isn't targeted at the highly motivated opera fan. For the casual listener, the collection offers mostly adequate, but few stellar performances, of a seemingly random group of popular arias, ensembles, choruses, and orchestral selections. Only a few are truly mediocre or worse: the slurpy rendition of the "Flower Song" from Carmen, and the pallid "Catalogue Aria" from Don Giovanni are the most egregious offenders. One drawback of this kind of compilation of excerpts from complete operas is the fact that the selections sometimes don't have a clearly defined beginning or ending, so some fade in or fade out inconclusively and annoyingly. The sound is mostly fine, but the volume between tracks is variable, and may require the listener to do some fiddling to find a comfortable level.