I immediately love the cast album of the new Sweeney Todd because it starts without the shrill whistle that destroyed some of my hearing through much of 1979 when I continually heard it on the original recording. As I encounter this great show once again, I'm reminded of what Leonard Bernstein said as quoted in Sondheim & Co. in 1974: "Steve is going to write an opera that will knock your eyes out." In fewer than five years, he did. Here's a show in which an angry Sweeney says "piss" not because Sondheim needed the word for a rhyme but because it's what the character would say. You don't get the entire score on the new CD; indeed, at 89 minutes, this two-disc set is only 17 minutes longer than the single-disc highlights version of the first recording. While I miss many of those interstitial "Ballads of Sweeney Todd" and the "Parlor Songs," I especially mourn the loss of the wonderfully childish laughter of Lansbury and Cariou after "With or without his privates?" But stars Patti LuPone and Michael Cerveris are in excellent voice, and this is a nice alternative recording with numbers that genially segue into another, making for a continuous musical experience. And what well-engineered, clear sound! God, that's good!