Word: toscas
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...that occasion, even though he admitted that Puccini's fellow composer Franco Alfano had done a good job of completing the score. Conductors since have not been so finicky; but even so, Turandot (roughly rhymes, with two afloat) has never been as popular as Puccini's Tosca, Madame Butterfly, La Boheme. Last week a New York City Opera audience heard some of the reasons...
Sensual & Sinister. Last week, Baritone Schoeffler capped his first season at the Met with a crack performance of the sensual and sinister Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca. When he was onstage with his longtime Vienna State Opera friend, red-haired Soprano Ljuba Welitch (as Tosca), the audience saw and heard the kind of sure, smooth action and singing that make Vienna's ensemble just about tops in the operatic world...
Onstage, red-haired Bulgarian Soprano Ljuba (Salome) Welitch was singing her first Tosca at the Metropolitan, and it was as exciting and free-swinging a performance of Tosca as a Met audience had ever seen. Backstage, there was more excitement still. Whispered one anxious artist in a thick Italian accent: "Do you know the words to this For He's a Jolly Good Fellow?" Replied another: "I don't even know the melody." Nevertheless, when the curtain went down on Tosca, then up again on a gala pageant of recent Met history, every singer present seemed to roar...
Metropolitan Opera (Sat. 2 p.m., ABC). Tosca, with Ferruccio Tagliavini...
Hair on the Chest. Singing so that back-row listeners could actually heaf was another problem. But this season plenty of top-rankers were on hand to try. On the nights when the Metropolitan Opera's Ferruccio Tagliavini sang Tosca and Lucia di Lammermoor, there were few empty seats; fans gladly paid double prices to hear once-barred (for alleged collaboration) Tenor Beniamino Gigli sing the operatic twins "Cav" and "Pag" (Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci) with popular Soprano Maria Caniglia and Baritone Tito Gobbi. Even 60-year-old Tenor Tito Schipa was on hand...