Giacomo PUCCINI (1858 – 1924)
Tosca (1900)
Floria Tosca, a celebrated singer – Zinka Milanov (soprano)
Mario Cavaradossi, a painter – Jussi Björling (tenor)
Baron Scarpia, chief of police – Leonard Warren (baritone)
Cesare Angelotti, escaped prisoner – Leonardo Monreale (bass)
The Sacristan – Fernando Corena (bass)
Spoletta, police agent – Mario Carlin (tenor)
Sciarrone, police agent – Nestore Catalani (bass)
A Jailer – Vincenzo Preziosa (bass)
A Shepherd Boy – Giovanni Bianchini (boy treble)
Rome Opera House Orchestra and Chorus/Erich Leinsdorf
rec. 2-18 July, 1957, Rome Opera House
First issued as RCA Victor LM-6052 (mono) and LSC-6052 (stereo)
PRISTINE AUDIO PACO163 [2 CDs: 113:29]
When Tosca premiered on 14 January 1900 it was the first important opera premiere of the 20th century and it has continued to be one of the most frequently performed operas to this very day. The hit numbers – the two tenor arias and Tosca’s Vissi d’arte – were also recorded numerous times by the first generation of gramophone singers and the first ‘complete’ recording arrived as early as 1918. A number of further pre-LP recordings were also issued. Best remembered are an HMV set with Maria Caniglia and Beniamino Gigli from 1938 and the even earlier one from 1929 with Carmen Melis as Tosca and the great Apollo Granforte as Scarpia. The drawback with that set is the provincial tenor but it is still worth a listen for the sake of the soprano and baritone (review). The early LP-era in the 1950s saw several good mono recordings, including a Decca with Tebaldi and a Cetra with Ferruccio Tagliavini as Cavaradossi, but head and shoulders above the competition was the 1953 EMI set under Victor de Sabata with the unsurpassable trio Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stefano and Tito Gobbi. It became the recording of Tosca, and has so remained. The mono sound is of course a drawback, but for the white heat intensity of the three protagonists and the glowing conducting of Sabata this drawback can easily be overlooked. However, the stereo technique was in the offing, even though it took some years before the first stereo LPs were in the market. First out were RCA Victor, who had already recorded their star Metropolitan trio Zinka Milanov, Jussi Björling and Leonard Warren in Il trovatore, Cavalleria rusticana and Aïda and now, after highly successful performances at the MET by the trio, saw the opportunity to bring them to Rome in the summer of 1957 and set them on to Austrian conductor Erich Leinsdorf for a two-week stint with Tosca. Leinsdorf had hitherto mainly been active in the German repertoire, but the success with Tosca whetted his appetite for the Italian repertoire and in the late 50s and the 60s he set down several top contenders for RCA.
This Tosca early in my LP collecting career became a source of musical delight, first in the shape of excerpts with Björling and later several other excerpts. Strangely enough, though, I never bought a complete set. Instead I got the fractionally later Decca set, with Tebaldi’s stereo remake where she was partnered with Mario Del Monaco and George London. In those days I was unwilling to have more than one recording of the same opera, thus it was Tebaldi who remained my only Tosca for many years.
Returning now to this more than 60-year-old recording my first impression was the quality of the sound. RCA’s original recording was certainly not bad and a CD transfer – a highlight disc only – I acquired a decade ago was excellent, but here I was quite stunned by the homogeneity of the sound, the depth of the sound picture, the stereo spread and the clarity. Andrew Rose has done it again! Listening with headphones, which is my normal procedure, I got a very realistic feeling of sitting in the Rome Opera House with eyes shut, no extra highlighting of individual instruments but still a myriad of details. The impressionistic opening of act III gives a very good view of Puccini’s masterly orchestration – this work is far from the “shabby little shocker” as a malicious rumour has it – with a piccolo phrase here, a harp-chord there, the strings wallowing just in front of me and the little shepherd boy, off-stage but vividly present and never swamped by the instruments. It also has to be said that Leinsdorf conducts the score with both punch and sensitivity. He lingers lovingly over many of the lyrical moments and gives the singers excellent support.
The singing is mostly excellent with the reliable Leonardo Monreale making a real character of Angelotti in the first act and the omnipresent Fernando Corena a vivid Sacristan. Golden tenor tones flow from Jussi Björling’s throat as soon as he appears, and his Cavaradossi is both intensely dramatic and lovingly tender. His Vittoria! in the second act torture scene is spine chilling but it is in the final act that he is at his most marvellously sensitive. E lucevan le stelle has rarely been sung with such inwardness and even more marvellous is O dolci mani with exquisite pianissimo singing. Björling had been singing the role since 1933 and recorded the two arias in 1935 (in Swedish). Zinka Milanov was also an old hand as Tosca (she sang her 95th two weeks before the recording sessions in a performance at Covent Garden where she was partnered by the then young and upcoming Franco Corelli, see review) though strangely enough she didn’t sing it at the MET until 1955. In 1957 she was 51 and in the Covent Garden performance she showed signs of shrillness and even some unsteadiness. In the Rome Opera House there is little evidence of either, even though she occasionally sports her bad habit of sliding up to some notes. But by and large she offers dramatic singing of the highest order and she also sings a touching, emotional Vissi d’arte and makes a ravishing diminuendo near the end of the aria. Her spoken E avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma after she has stabbed Scarpia to death is filled with dark indignation. Leonard Warren didn’t sing his first Scarpia until 8 December 1955 opposite Tebaldi’s Tosca and the hard-to-please Irving Kolodin was deeply impressed by his complete command of the role, vocally and dramatically. 1½ year and 10 performances later he had honed the portrait further to challenge both Gobbi and Taddei, and with a more solid voice than either his reading is as close to perfection one can reach. He often adopts a conversational tone that makes him seem completely harmless, only to roar like a lion the next moment, sending chilling shudders along the spine. The moment when he is trying to make Tosca agree to sell herself to save Mario is so telling. Spoletta has just reported that everything is prepared for the execution, Tosca says to herself Dio! m’assisti! (God help me!). Scarpia turns to Spoletta, saying Aspetta (Wait) and then to Tosca with the most honeyed whisper: Ebbene? (Well?) and Tosca just nods consent. This is big drama in small format. A masterly Scarpia!
While possibly the Sabata–Callas recording will never be surpassed there are a number of other sets that are recommendable in every respect and will adorn every CD collection: Molinari-Pradelli–Tebaldi; Karajan–Price; Colin Davis–Caballé. To this illustrious company I would now add the Leinsdorf–Milanov constellation in its newest incarnation – more in fact for the singing and acting of Björling and Warren than for the prima donna’s, good though she is.
Göran Forsling
