Sei troppo bella, Tosca

Like brother Rich, vilaine fille rejoices that Galina Vishnevskaya's 1976 recording of Puccini's Tosca under Mstislav Rostropovich has been issued on CD. A mystery: Why the cover art shows Zerlina with a carving knife instead of the classic shot of Galina as the diva under whose gaze all cower:

Qual occhio al mondo può star di paro
all'ardente occhio tuo nero?

Vishnevskaya does not rank among vilaine fille's favorite singers, for the simple reason that she is not a singer: She is a shaman. Listen to the Iolanta, Oprichnik, and Charodeika arias from her wondrous Verdi/Puccini/Tchaikovsky recital, and you hear not a voice but flames and shooting stars and exploding galaxies made sound. Incidentally, for wobbly-knee vocal glamour, not even Battistini or Hvorostovsky can touch the Onegin of Georg Ots, Vishnevskaya's partner on that disc in the final scene from Tchaikovsky's opera. (Hear Ots in excerpts from The Demon and Pagliacci at Andrea Suhm-Binder's magnificent site, cantabile-subito.)

Vishnevskaya's Tosca is at one with Rostropovich's reading: "mercurial," as Opera on Record notes, willful and enthralling—for how else should a prima donna be? Some of her high notes are yells, and her tone can be unsteady, but who cares when a Tosca caresses "dilla ancora" with such rapture, or when she makes you *see* her "È tanto buona!" melting into a kiss?

In "Vissi d'arte," Leontyne Price is the Tosca "whose soul is bold in extremity and even before G-d" (John Steane, The Grand Tradition) and hors concours for vocal splendor. Not even Price, though, fills that first "perché, perché, S-gnore?" with the injured outrage that Vishnevskaya summons. The abject tenderness that Vishnevskaya lavishes upon Cavaradossi in Act III and her giddiness as the firing squad does its foul work make the final catastrophe all the more shattering.

As for Slava, one glory of his reading is his seamless shaping of the complex succession of musical ideas running from Scarpia's entrance through the end of Act I. In lesser hands, this can be an episodic jumble, and only de Sabata gives it comparable coherence. The Te Deum is a marvel, with the different motifs—the salacious orchestral figure, the organ, the choir's chants—dovetailing inevitably and yet floating in from afar, as if filtered through Scarpia's consciousness. When the final, crashing chords cut off, one has the bewildering sense of awakening from someone else's lascivious reveries. Act III's dawn over the Tiber is grave and poignant, with (you bet!) a uniquely gorgeous cello quartet.

While Matteo Manuguerra did not possess the imposing sound of a Tito Gobbi or Giuseppe Taddei, his crisp orders and the quiet, insinuating elegance with which he ensnares Tosca in Act I make him a fearsome and magnetic Scarpia. Then again, if you have ever cringed at Gobbi's dry timbre or Taddei's wobble, Manuguerra's lean, supple tone could be just the thing for you. As brother Rich and vilaine fille observe, Manuguerra (who died in 1998) never enjoyed the renown that he deserved, but his Scarpia is one of the great assumptions of this or any role, one that every opera lover should hear.

Franco Bonisolli has never been a favorite chez vilaine fille,* but when he is good, he is very good, with a molten legato and exquisitely sensitive phrasing in "E lucevan le stelle"—before he starts with the bawling. Set against Manuguerra's cool, gentlemanly Scarpia, Bonisolli's Cavaradossi sounds like the kind of hothead that the authorities would do well to monitor. His manly tone and the rapt ardor of his "Recondita armonia" suggest a man who knows his business on canvas and between the sheets, and who just might be worth killing and dying for.

* [You know me: If it's not Schipa, Kozlovsky, Bergonzi, or Flórez, it's a "Heldenschwein." Yes, I exaggerate, but only a bit!]

Indeed, the genius of this Tosca (recorded after a legendary run of performances in Paris) is the way that Rostropovich and his forces capture the stink of the theatre: the delicious feel of love-play between Vishnevskaya and Bonisolli in Act I; the bemused smile behind Manuguerra's "In chiesa?"; Bonisolli's ghastly cries during the torture scene, which leave you half-fearing that he might emerge, um, bereft and sounding like Alfred Deller.

After listening to Vishnevskaya's Tosca, I decided to revisit another budget reissue of Puccini's opera: the 1991 Decca set conducted by Riccardo Muti, with Carol Vaness in the title role. If you can hear past the monothink whereby "Riccardo Muti" equals "driven and impersonal," you will find that this Tosca has much to offer: superb sound, gorgeous (as in: blazing, over-the-moon) playing from the Philadelphia Orchestra, and a taut, febrile reading from the maestro.

Like Rostropovich, Muti slows things down markedly just before Tosca's fell deed in Act II. But where Slava plays this music as a tearful lament for Tosca, Muti makes those dark, sinuous string phrases tantalizingly ambiguous: a prelude to murder or pre-coital thrills? In Muti's reading, something more than stealth and panic simmers beneath the music's surface after Tosca kills Scarpia—the lingering pull of sex, a furtive regret for the sinister joys that might have been.

Listen, too, to the winds in the marvelous passage preceding Scarpia's "Ed or fra noi parliamo da buoni amici": mournful and bleakly sensual at the same time. The entire second act is revelatory, and it is a pleasure to savor the details of Puccini's kaleidoscopic orchestration, something that the restricted sound of the Sabata, Karajan (1963), and Rostropovich recordings does not allow.*

* [The recent EMI set under Antonio Pappano has fine sound, and Angela Gheorghiu is a mesmerizing Tosca. My cherished Ruggero Raimondi, though, is past his prime as Scarpia; and here as elsewhere, I cannot fathom the appeal of Roberto Alagna's raw, out-of-tune caterwauling and crooning.]

The weakness of Muti's Tosca is Giorgio Zancanaro, whose lucid enunciation, conscientious musicianship, and sexy timbre somehow don't add up to a commanding Scarpia. Giuseppe Giacomini, as irmão Rodrigo observes, is "strong and more sober than usual" as Cavaradossi; less the firebrand, more the thoughtful partner to Vaness's fierce, earnest prima donna.

Vaness herself is in radiantly healthy voice, with kick-ass chest tones. Different artists emphasize different facets of Tosca's character: Callas her girlishness and vulnerability, Price her feline allure, Vishnevskaya her rashness and abandon, and Vaness her dignity and womanly devotion. In the theatre, Vaness always moves me because her Tosca murders Scarpia fully aware of the moral horror of her deed and not blindly, as an almost reflexive act. On disc, she is less distinctive than the forenamed legendary divas, but I am glad that her portrayal has been preserved.

Given vilaine fille's arrested development, her adolescent disdain for Puccini lasted from her mid-twenties to her mid-thirties. Some people never get over theirs. So much the worse for them—though if they are willing to open their minds, these compelling versions of Tosca led by Rostropovich and Muti might help them overcome their sophomoric prejudices.

Comments

[vilaine fille]

Thank you, darling Ira! I hope you liked the sound file.

[ira]

I read it with a huge interest. Thank you. Now I'm thinking of your idea of Vishnevskaya as a shaman..