Coming to this historic video recording after Muti's La Scala version is to register a quite different operatic world. Recorded in black and white at a performance in the Stuttgart Staatsoper in June 1961, it offers a sound, conventional production with in-period costumes and realistic if symmetrical sets by Max Fritzsche.
The film direction too is highly conventional.
This DVD is specially valuable for Renata Tebaldi's assumption of the title-role. So dominant in our memories has Maria Callas's characterisation become, that we tend to forget that the role of Tosca was just as central in the repertory of her great rival of the time, Tebaldi, whose firm, creamy tones, perfectly controlled, could hardly be more sharply contrasted with the thrillingly individual, if at times flawed, singing of Callas. Tebaldi seemed to represent the essence of the primadonna, grand in a traditional way, and who better to play the role of Tosca? There's ample evidence here of that commanding security in the role, with Tebaldi in 1961 still at her peak. Yet as recorded in limited mono sound, with voices well forward of the orchestra, at times there's an untypical edge on the creamy tone at the top. True to form, Tebaldi rises magnificently to the challenge of 'Vissi d'arte' in Act 2, with fine shading of tone and flawless legato in that moment of repose.
That said, one has to note that in her acting this Tosca isn't so much passionate as stately.
Eugene Tobin as Cavaradossi, like many tenors, starts lustily, and then gets more expressive as he goes along, never betraying signs of strain.
George London makes a handsome Scarpia, imperious and vehement both in his acting and in his singing. Yet as so often in recordings, his pitching is often vague. Franco Patanè as conductor is at times over-emphatic, again presenting a conventional view, and rarely conveying the sort of magnetism that makes the Muti performance so gripping.
Worth buying to hear Tebaldi in her prime.