“Vittoria! Vittoria!” No wonder all the backroom boys and torture-chamber skivvies pile in during the course of that top note to see what is going on. And there he stands too, smiling and looking like a million dollars. Corelli was 35 when the film was made, but at such moments, and indeed most others, could well be in his mid-twenties. It would be too much to say that he acts well – for half the time the camera shows little interest in him, so we can’t tell – and he will often seem not very sure about exactly what to do (at the arrival of Tosca on the battlements, for instance, he shows no particular surprise or delight but thankfully studies the safe-conduct instead). Still, when he sings “O dolci mani” the face as well as the voice tells of real feeling, and in “Amaro sol per te” the sight of him certainly supports the sound, which is magnificent.
That is: the voice sounds magnificent, and the generally poor quality of recorded sound cannot disguise it. Tosca’s voice and Scarpia’s belong respectively to Maria Caniglia (then aged 50) and Giangiacomo Guelfi, a formidable pair, and they come over vividly, if with some roughness. The orchestra suffers most, from wow and distortion, and of course no one whose prime intention is to hear Puccini’s score will choose this version. Nor, since we don’t see Caniglia or Guelfi, is that possible interest fulfilled. Afro Poli, an actor-singer with dramatic flair and presence, is worth seeing as Scarpia, though corresponding compliments to Franca Duval’s Tosca would be somewhat muted.
As for production, one can tell that they have tried; but it is not a clever film. One advantage of film as a medium is that it can make clear, for instance, that Scarpia’s part in the Te Deum scene is really a soliloquy; yet in this production he is absurdly seen singing at full throttle so that it is inexplicable that the ladies of the congregation do not turn round to look at him. Film has its approved conventions as does opera, but they shouldn’t be mixed. Money and effort have been spent on rather silly things, like letting us see the gavotte in Queen Carolina’s ballroom, the shepherd boy with his sheep, and Corelli being given a bad time in the torture chamber. But they can’t get half of the camera work work right: Scarpia and Cavaradossi, for instance, are part-on, part-off the screen at times of making quite important pronouncements. No: the film is for Corelli addicts, but for them (and there are plenty of us) its purchase will be a worthwhile investment.
I wish as much could be said for the recital. Even the Corelli Addiction Society can be safely advised to leave it to such of their members as a) need to have absolutely everything, and b) might care to risk a little mild aversion-therapy. The 50 minutes’ viewing-time brings four full-length arias, the ballata from Rigoletto (roughly two minutes long), Dick Johnson’s effective but brief appeal to the miners in La fanciulla del West, one song and three song-samples. For the rest, rather more than 20 minutes of it I should think, there are comings and goings, bowing and applause. The sound quality is bad (this, after all, is 1971). If there were some appropriate musical or ‘historical’ reward I would take it and be thankful, but there is nothing here that Corelli has not sung and/or recorded better elsewhere. The concert was presumably one of the four he gave in Tokyo. Nothing is said to identify the place or the orchestra, but perhaps the chief interest of the film lies in the enthusiasm of the Japanese audience.'