[Met Performance] CID:197620



Tosca
Metropolitan Opera House, Sun, March 22, 1964

Debut : Stuart Fischer




Tosca (432)
Giacomo Puccini | Luigi Illica/Giuseppe Giacosa
Tosca
Renata Tebaldi

Cavaradossi
Franco Corelli

Scarpia
Tito Gobbi

Sacristan
Fernando Corena

Spoletta
Mariano Caruso

Angelotti
Justino D?az

Sciarrone
William Walker

Shepherd
Stuart Fischer [Debut]

Jailer
Russell Christopher


Conductor
Fausto Cleva


Director
Dino Yannopoulos

Designer
Frederick Fox

Stage Director
Nathaniel Merrill





Tosca received five performances this season.

Review 1:

Irving Kolodin in the Saturday Review of April 4, 1964

A Tebaldi-Gobbi-Corelli “Tosca”

 

The kind of operatic performance that revives hopes and rekindles standards rewarded those who were fortunate enough to attend the Metropolitan's first “Tosca” in two years. Present as promised were Renata Tebaldi, undertaking the second role of her resumed career, and Tito Gobbi in his first Metropolitan appearance in much too long. Present though not promised was Franco Corelli, who became a party to the proceedings in consequence of Barry Morell's indisposition.

The air of excitement was communicated first to, and by, Fausto Cleva, whose open*ing orchestral proclamation had a solidity and thrust prophetic of things to come. What came not only justified the excitement but rendered a sermon on the values that make opera an art and rejoiced those who esteem it in all its forms, from the sophisticated to the primitive. The text is, in all simplicity, that neither man nor woman can live by voice alone: for Corelli, who had the most of it, finished a distanced third to Tebaldi and Gobbi, who were, in one form or another, working with all professionalism against the need to protect and preserve.

As Gobbi's Scarpia is internationally esteemed, it should be sufficient to say that it, is today even more a paragon than ever before—sinister, polished, suave, as much a gentleman as a villain. However, this would award him less than his due in artistry, both dramatic and vocal, in making every sound the counterpart of a theatrical purpose. For Scarpia is a role that is all theater, and the more so the better it is played. In an achievement that flowed from one moment to the next with never a break of concentration, one might single out the revealing detail in which he flicked the feather of his quill pen against Tosca's arm as he prepared to write her safe conduct pass—a charming touch of character, both humorous and sadistic. Those who miss his further appearances have only themselves to blame.

As Tosca, Tebaldi took a long stride ahead from the Mimi in "Bohème" which she had sung the week before This was not so much a by-product of replenished vocal strength as of greater abandon in the use of what she currently possesses. The sound was more pointed, less abundant than in times past, but she manipulated it, in Act I, with a greater emphasis on word values and dramatic purpose. In Act II, she drove without stint to the high C (on "Non è ver") and put her emotional reserve to the test of a "Vissi d'arte” that was more meaningful than some she has sung in times of greater vocal abundance. The clamorous response of the audience probably melted any inner blocks (vocal or otherwise) that remained. There was, indeed, a suggestion of faith renewed and confidence restored in her response to the tempest of applause at the act's end, earned, merited, and accorded.

Amid these highly conscious acts of operatic artistry, Corelli's loud and assertive Cavaradossi made him less a participant than a contestant, striving to equalize by volume what he lacked in artistic resource. Doubtless the day will come when he, too, will know how and where to apply what he commands in masculine vitality, but it will be, one fears, at the expense of many overstressed "Vittorias" and a plethora of other vocal excesses. For all that, this was a “Tosca” to remember, not only for the sparks generated by Tebaldi and Gobbi and Cleva, but also for their communication to Justino Diaz in his first, excellent Angelotti and Mariano Caruso's accomplished Spoletta. The theater capable of such first-class results cannot in justice be measured by any other.



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