Word: toscas
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...TOSCA (Angel; 2 LPs). Justly famed as Tosca, which she sang on her recent return to the Metropolitan Opera, Maria Callas today gives performances brimming with passion. But this newly recorded Callas has a nearly unbeatable rival-the Callas of twelve years ago. Since then her voice and even, occasionally, her characterization have hardened, and though the drama may at times be heightened, cerebral firepower is no substitute for vocal beauty. Baritone Tito Gobbi is again a superb Scarpia...
...commanding up to $800 for tickets. Bleary-eyed fans lined up and slept on the sidewalks outside the Met for three days to snap up 448 standing-room tickets. The buildup, and one of the most glittering audiences in memory, demanded a triumphal evening. Callas, singing the role of Tosca, made it so, not with her voice, but with every last ounce of her siren skill...
...Tosca is a jealous lover, and Callas played the part with pantherish intensity, purring innocently one moment, spitting hellfire the next. In the second-act encounter with the lecherous police chief Scarpia, splendidly portrayed by Baritone Tito Gobbi, Callas was at her supercharged best. When the soldiers carried off her Mario, they nearly buckled under her pummeling. She lurched desperately about the stage fending off Scarpia's advances, then in a violent flash drove a knife into his heart. Callas and Gobbi treated the Met to one of the best-acted performances it has seen in many a year...
Controlling an Animal. But Tosca is not a play; the singing's the thing. And even Callas could not make it otherwise. Never an instrument of luscious quality, her soprano last week was a thin and often wobbly echo of the voice that fled the Met in 1958. Her high notes were shrill and achingly insecure, and seemed all the more so by contrast with the rich, ringing tenor of Franco Corelli as Mario. In the poignant Vissi d'Arte aria, Callas relied almost wholly on dramatic rather than vocal brilliance to carry her through-which...
...January, Leontyne Price will sing Cosí fan Tutte for the first time, followed by the conducting debut of William Steinberg (TIME, Sept. 11) two months later. In March, after an absence of seven years, Maria Callas will make her long-awaited return to the Met to sing Tosca...