[78-L] Don Giovanni

[DAVID BURNHAM]

During a record hunt earlier this week, I picked up as a curiosity Don Giovanni complete on "convenient" 45 rpm records.  This is the Fritz Busch Victor recording which originally came out on 78s.  What I'm curious about is that this set contains 19 records, but on 78s there were 23 records.  These are not EP 45s, just normal length so I can't understand why they wouldn't have simply put each 78 side on a 45 side.  It would have been a fair amount of work to recouple the 78 sides so that there were 38 sides instead of 46.  I've never seen the 78s so I don't know how they were configured.  Does anyone know if this 45 set is edited down from the original 78 set, or is this a live performance which was originally recorded on a longer medium and sliced up for 78s and sliced up again with thicker slices for the 45s, or did they actually go to the trouble of re-combining the 78 sides to produce fewer / longer sides?

Thanks!
db