Maria Guleghina is perhaps more identified with Tosca than with any other role: she has sung it at virtually every major opera house in the world and many people must have been hoping that she would record it. Recent reports from Italy have spoken excitedly of Salvatore Licitra, a young Swiss-born tenor of Sicilian parentage and Italian training; his career is barely three years old. Fans of the soprano will be delighted: she is in ample, imperious voice, with a dramatic Slav vibrancy to it. She launches ‘Vissi d’arte’ with abundant, expressive tone, and in vocal temperament she would be a match for any Scarpia. Licitra’s voice is full, ringing and easily produced, a genuinely Italianate sound of great potential. His comfortable range is mezzo-forte and above, and he rarely attempts anything quieter; indeed he seems to have a sort of ‘standard dynamic’ to which most phrases rise within a few notes. His ‘E lucevan le stelle’ is restrained, however, and he does not hang on interminably to his cries of ‘Vittoria!’: promising signs that with more experience and in other roles he may find more variety of vocal colour and reveal more character.
Character indeed is what this Tosca most conspicuously lacks. There is no coquetry when this prima donna tells her Cavaradossi to give his painting of the Magdalen dark eyes, like hers; he shows no affectionate amusement at her ‘precious eulogy’ of the picture as ‘too beautiful’, nor at her professional advice on how to die convincingly in Act 3. Imagining their life together in exile, she sings the phrases ‘do you smell the scent of roses?’ and ‘I shall close your eyes with a thousand kisses’ as though they meant little to her. What a glamorous but impassive couple they make! Nor does Leo Nucci’s Scarpia provide much subtlety; he sings the conventional brute with reliably abundant voice, but never suggests malignity masked by suave elegance. Most of the acting happens in the orchestra, from the fff timpani in the opening bars to the headlong snatch of Cavaradossi’s theme when Tosca throws herself from the ramparts. Both effects are coarse, but elsewhere Muti employs much subtly moulded rubato, and the orchestra often responds with very beautiful playing. In Act 2 especially, however, this can dissipate Puccini’s inexorable build-ups of tension. The Angelotti and the Sacristan are both good, the latter unexaggerated. The live recording gives a decent sense of a stage and movement about it; a bit distracting at times, but the cast’s excellent diction is not compromised.
There are numerous Tosca s, of course, in which these characters and their predicaments are far more vividly and involvingly presented, notably De Sabata’s account on EMI, with Callas, Di Stefano and Gobbi, and Karajan’s on Decca, with Leontyne Price, Di Stefano and Giuseppe Taddei. This one is competent and generously sung, primarily for admirers of Guleghina or for those curious to hear Licitra