This release may not top any best-of lists among the numerous recordings of Tosca, but it offers excellent value per dollar. (If money is no object, go back to Renata Scotto's recording or even the sonically questionable but dramatically seething 1953 Maria Callas version, now available on EMI, a benchmark example of how to bring the grim events of this opera to affecting life.) The present recording, put together from two live performances recorded in Philadelphia in 1991 and 1992, features fine singing but is really ...
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This release may not top any best-of lists among the numerous recordings of Tosca, but it offers excellent value per dollar. (If money is no object, go back to Renata Scotto's recording or even the sonically questionable but dramatically seething 1953 Maria Callas version, now available on EMI, a benchmark example of how to bring the grim events of this opera to affecting life.) The present recording, put together from two live performances recorded in Philadelphia in 1991 and 1992, features fine singing but is really something of an orchestrally, conductorially conceived Tosca. Riccardo Muti leads the Philadelphia Orchestra, obtaining a lushness and acrobatic excitement that bring the orchestra to the center of the drama and offer ample evidence of how Muti got to be one of today's hot conductors. The orchestra's brasses deliver absolutely crackerjack playing, right from the opera's sudden opening plunge into the action. Carol Vaness as Tosca is every bit the diva, and Giuseppe Giacomini is an...
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