Karajan's classic 1961 version of Tosca could not be more welcome as one of the first issues in Decca's Grand Opera series, now revived on midprice CD. Originally issued on the RCA label, but produced by John Culshaw of Decca at a vintage period, it neatly focuses the merits and failings of the other three versions here reissued on CD. Between the four and the Mehta/RCA listed above you have a fascinating overlap of casts with Leontyne Price appearing as Tosca twice (for Mehta, as well as for Karajan 12 years earlier), Placido Domingo sings Cavaradossi twice (for Levine on the 1982 EMI set as well as for Mehta); while Sherrill Milnes appears twice as Scarpia (for Rescigno on the 1980 Decca as well as for Mehta). The many comparisons have been fascinating.
The first surprise is to find the 1961 sound for Karajan the most satisfying of all, in almost every way the best balanced with a firm sense of presence and with each voice and each section of the orchestra cleanly focused within the stereo spectrum. That is a spectacular tribute to Decca engineering of the time, and to the detailed production of Culshaw. There is some thinness at times on high violins but that is never sourly obtrusive. Therc are also the occasional bumps and noises which the LP process never revealed on the mastertape, which now come out on CD, but they are few enough to be undistracting.
What is less surprising is the supremacy of the Karajan version as an interpretation. He has always been a master Puccinian, and this set was a prime example of that mastery. As an interpretation it is even more individual and more spontaneous-sounding than his 1985 version made for DG in Berlin. A prime instance comes at the end of Act I, where Scarpia's Te Deum is taken daringly slowly, even more so than in Berlin, and conveys a quiver of menace that not one of the other versions begins to match. This time I noted as a tiny incidental the extra impact of the offstage cannon shots compared with the others. With Mehta I suspect that no more than the bass drum was used.
One nicety in Karajan's reading I had never noticed before is the way that in the instrumental introduction to Cavaradossi's first aria, ''Recondita armonia'', he treats it as the musical equivalent of a painter mixing his colours, the very point Puccini no doubt had in mind.
Karajan, though individual, and regularly challenging his singers (as he does with Taddei in the slow speed for the Te Deum) is also the most solicitous of the four conductors in following the voices. It is fascinating to note what expressive freedom he allows his tenor, di Stefano, and he makes Leontyne Price relax more than she did for Mehta 12 years later. In that time the voice had lost a little of its bloom, and obviously the technical problems had become more of an effort. Both are superb assumptions of the role, big and tich of tone, intense of expression, yet if one wants to remember Price at her peak, it is the Karajan set which must represent her, and the voice is the more beautiful for not being recorded quite so closely as on the later RCA set.
Neither Freni for Rescigno (in 1978 taking on a role that was rather heavy for her), nor Scotto for Levine can quite match Price, fine as many details are. In different ways the stress shows with both of them, with Freni in the occasional fraying of tone, with Scotto in the voice's tendency to spread under pressure, though she rises superbly to the challenge of ''Vissi d'arte''.
The Rescigno cast was, I have always understood, the one which Decca intended to line up for a 1970s Karajan version, following up that company's Boheme and Butterfly with him. In the event, for all its merits, not least Pavarotti's characteristically alert and pointful Cavaradossi, it fails to add up to the sum of its parts. The splendid, noble-sounding Scarpia, of Milnes is lessened in impact by the conducting even in the Te Deum, where Rescigno's slow speed, unlike Karajan's, simply sounds slack. The 1978 recording is excellent, fuller than any, but at full price it is hardly competitive.
Nor ultimately are either of the other two sets now reissued. Sadly, the Leinsdorf is impossibly slow and heavy, factors which put it out of court in this company. Levine is idiosyncratic, not getting off to a good start, even when the opening Scarpia chords stagnate, before he rushes madly off on the Angelotti music. Though this is the most recent recording, it is the least well transferred, with a rather unpleasant fierceness on the brass. I find the LP transfer on a new double-folder reissue of the same set on Classics for Pleasure more sympathetic. In any case, at CfP's bargain price (less than a quarter of that of the CDs) no one is going to complain that this is not the top recommendation, featuring as it does three outstanding principals, with Domingo's voice caught rather better here than in the Mehta version. One delightful oddity of the set is the casting of the small role of the gaoler in Act 3. It is credited to Itzhak Perlman, and the great violinist sings with a firm resonance beyond most comprimarios you will hear.
Mehta, as an excellent Puccinian, paces most of the opera very well indeed, and anyone who wants that particular combination of principals, namely Price, Domingo and Milnes (bringing together the three multiple interpreters of the roles), will not be disappointed. The CD transfer is good, if not outstanding and there are rather more cue-points on the two CDs than on the other sets.
One point of format on CD should be noted. Unlike early CD issues of Tosca such as the Karajan DG and the Callas on EMI, these latest four have no internal breaks in acts. The division between the discs comes at the end of Act 1, with Acts 2 and 3 complete on the second disc, where earlier sets had Act 2 broken as on LP. The Decca Grand Opera series format for Karajan has (at mid-price) a double jewel-case with the libretto in English as well as Italian inside.'