Tosca

Lots of silly people make lists of “best” and “biggest”, etc. I remember some young music journalist solemnly opining that the “greatest composer of the 20th century” was ... Igor Stravinsky! Bizarre. But no one's list starts with Giacomo Puccini, and that is a shame since the composer of La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot left an indelible and probably permanent impression on the music of the 20th century.

This evening I listened to Tosca, with Maria Callas, Tito Gobbi, Giuseppe di Stefano; Victor de Sabata conducted the 1953 classic recording (made in mono). Not too many recordings can be classified as definitive but this, I have always felt, is one. Not a weak spot anywhere. I only saw Tosca once in the theatre (oddly enough, in the Kremlin Theatre in Moscow in the 1970s). But it's an opera for eternity that is always a deeply emotional experience.