Puccini: Tosca

Tilson Thomas, coming to it without the benefit of any experience in the opera house, has obviously approached it with fresh ears, and appreciated the degree of delicacy in the orchestral writing. That is entirely beneficial in much of Act I and most of Act 3. I have seldom heard several passages, especially the opening scene of the latter, played with such lightness. The conductor is also concerned here, and in some of the more heavily scored passage, to allow light and air into the texture and it repays the sensitivity of such scrupulous attention.

Gramophone