This release may not top any best-of lists among the numerous recordings of Tosca, but it offers excellent value per dollar. (If money is no object, go back to Renata Scotto's recording or even the sonically questionable but dramatically seething 1953 Maria Callas version, now available on EMI, a benchmark example of how to bring the grim events of this opera to affecting life.) The present recording, put together from two live performances recorded in Philadelphia in 1991 and 1992, features fine singing but is really something of an orchestrally, conductorially conceived Tosca. Riccardo Muti leads the Philadelphia Orchestra, obtaining a lushness and acrobatic excitement that bring the orchestra to the center of the drama and offer ample evidence of how Muti got to be one of today's hot conductors. The orchestra's brasses deliver absolutely crackerjack playing, right from the opera's sudden opening plunge into the action. Carol Vaness as Tosca is every bit the diva, and Giuseppe Giacomini is an exciting, big-voiced Cavaradossi. The only major complaints come from factors extraneous to the music; Decca's packaging job here could give budget releases a bad name. No printed libretto is included; instead, you're supposed to use the enhanced CD to get the libretto. But of course this makes it impossible to use the expensive speakers you bought so you could enjoy your opera collection. Many opera lovers, it is true, have Tosca in their bones, but even they might want to check a line or two -- and what about the newcomers typically attracted to budget series? It seems difficult even to play the recording on a computer while reading the text, so really there is no enhancement at all here. For those who know every line of the opera, however, this is a unique and worthwhile modern version.