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A fiery red-head Tosca and hunky clean-shaven Cavaradossi fail to set alight a hardworking and paradoxically tepid performance of Puccini's shabby shocker.
This DVD, as far as I can tell, is a budget re-release, which may account for the lack of extra features and an album booklet. The lack of subtitles or any form of plot synopsis is, however, a serious omission. The production, designed for performance in the arena, is often captured intimately by the cameras, but the video director's tendency to cut quickly and confusingly between angled shots is unhelpful. Oddly, we are also, at no point, shown the concert venue, even during the curtain calls.
The performance shines most brightly when Francesca Patané (in the title role) opens her mouth. This Tosca perhaps lacks the necessary resonance down below, and her throat can struggle with note entries, but there is something thrilling about her vibrant delivery and wildly intense, only sometimes shrill, timbre at the top. Perhaps Patané's acting is mannered, but Tosca is a theatrical character, necessarily impetuous, flamboyant and self-obsessed.
This is what makes the aria Vissi d'arte, her moment of greatest helplessness, so affecting, and perhaps this is the one place that this interpretation loses its way. Patané's sound, however penetrating, lacks enough limpid fragility to give the gorgeous solo its full effect, to prevent the aria from selfishly interrupting Act Two's conversational flow.
José Cura's testosterone-fuelled, bizarrely baritonal tenor thunders into the arena, yet his interpretation of Cavaradossi is most successful in the moments of intimacy. Here, Cura's piano is vastly more beautiful than his forte. He sounds terribly under strain in his upper register throughout, and can consequently both wobble and veer from the centre of the note. Recondita armonia, coming at the start of the opera, finds the singer in particular difficulty, though there are glints of vocal beauty (notably the warm, shapely Tu azzurro hai l'occhio, enclosing a wonderful Italiante rolled R). By the end, Cura's efforts have paid off and one can admire both his vocal stamina and his convincing acting, even when his vocal struggle is to the detriment of the musical line.
To my surprise, I found Renato Bruson an underwhelming Scarpia, vocally strong barring some loss of direction up above, but looking more like a smug uncle than a vile bastard. I know that the character's outer dignity ironically hides his inner corruption, but some palpable sense of menace is definitely desirable. Frederico Longhi does not extract enough from the role of the Sacristan. Conductor Pier Giorgio Morandi, fatally, brings neither enough passion nor enough precision to Puccini's intricately-woven score, and the Orchester der Provinz Bari are dramatically underwhelming, the string intonation of particular concern. The odd balance of voices and orchestra results in some dissipated orchestral detail, and often the secondary characters are too strongly amplified. Both Spoletta's Act Two prayer and the Voci confuse at the end of Act Three are overly loud, rendering both moments musically absurd.
Enrico Castiglione's production is simple and unobtrusive, the character direction responding thoughtfully to the drama, but the bright lighting can give the sets an appearance of gaudiness and vulgarity, even if that appearance does, with validity, emphasise the work's strong theatrical element, an element also embraced by Patané. But the drama never quite sparks to life. The overall impression is of a toilsome, diligent effort by most but also of a sadly underwhelming end product.
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