La Tosca

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 412, 16 May 1947, Page 9

La Tosca

FOR a really sordid story of lust and crime it would take a lot to beat Puccini’s Tosca. Naked passion and naked weapons are usually pretty prevalent in any opera worthy of the name, but in this one they run riot, Taken from the original work by Sardou, the libretto here seems to restrict the composer’s scope rather than extend it; Puccini merely supplies some very fine incidental music. He does, however, miraculously succeed in finding | lyrical moments to which he does full justice. It is in works such as this, where the libretto is more than a mere peg on which to hang the music, that the radio version seems least satisfactory; the announcer’s detached voice summarising the whole thing as if it was a weather report makes it all a little ridiculous. It is like trying to gain an impression of Hamlet from a few quotations and the dust-cover summary. But the programmes are well worth listening to, and it is a pity that in order to fit it in on a Sunday evening a work like this has to be split in half. After one has been interrupted to listen to the Sunday Evening Talk and then the News, it is a little difficult to pick up the not-so-appetising thread of Tosca and follow it to its bitter end. But for a real crime thriller it can’t be beaten.