This live 1958 recording of Tosca at La Scala is likely to be of interest primarily to listeners willing to put up with an annoyingly high noise level. The unrelenting tape hiss is loud enough to mask details of the orchestration. The prompter is frequently very intrusive, and the enthusiastic audience makes its presence known with outbursts of applause. The voices, though, are miked at a high enough level that they are always clearly audible, so fans of Tebaldi, di Stefano, and Bastianini may be willing to overlook these shortcomings for the sake of the very fine performance. All are in exceptionally strong voice. Tebaldi's Tosca is both limpid and impetuous, and her tone is radiant. The dark, penetrating quality of Bastianini's voice is genuinely malevolent. Di Stefano is resonant and thrillingly heroic, and the scene when he learns of Napoleon's victory is fiercely impassioned; from that point to the end of the second act, the performance is searingly tense, a highlight of the recording. Tebaldi and di Stefano made studio recordings of Tosca that put this one to shame in their polished sound, but there is real chemistry here that focuses attention on the opera as an ensemble piece. Gianandrea Gavazzeni's propulsively dramatic and atmospheric conducting is strikingly effective, and in spite of the recording's sonic limitations, it's possible to discern that the orchestral playing is idiomatic and impassioned.
The album is filled out with eight tracks featuring di Stefano and Tebaldi in excerpts from Manon Lescaut, La bohème (in an unusually sensuous and romantic performance), and Gianni Schicchi. Di Stefano's and Tebaldi's performances are potent testimony to what many opera lovers nostalgically refer to as the Golden Age. The sound quality on these tracks is acceptable, but variable.
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