[Met Performance] CID:190580



Tosca
Metropolitan Opera House, Thu, March 22, 1962




Tosca (417)
Giacomo Puccini | Luigi Illica/Giuseppe Giacosa
Tosca
Licia Albanese

Cavaradossi
Franco Corelli

Scarpia
Walter Cassel

Sacristan
Ezio Flagello

Spoletta
Paul Franke

Angelotti
Norman Scott

Sciarrone
George Cehanovsky

Shepherd
Alan Fischer

Jailer
Roald Reitan


Conductor
Kurt Adler







Review 1:

Review of Alan Rich in The New York Times

Puccini's three most famous heroines - Mimi, Butterfly and Tosca - have at least two things in common. One is that they each sing their first notes off-stage. The second is that Licia Albanese has sung them all beautifully with the Metropolitan Opera this year. Last night she sang her first Tosca of the season.

It was a wonderful performance, intense, full of beautifully conceived passion and tenderness. With the tiniest thread of a voice, but with that thread under perfect control, she spun forth a vital portrayal that made the character alive and believable.

Miss Albanese moved with majestic grace. Her second act "Vissi d'arte" was free of the stage trickery that has become traditional for this aria. She merely sang it as a quiet and despairing supplication, and the message came across.

Franco Corelli was the Cavaradossi, Walter Cassel sang Scarpia, and Ezio Flagello nearly stole the show as the Sacristan. But it was clearly Miss

Albanese's night and, thanks to her efforts, Puccini's night as well. Kurt Adler conducted.



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