Tullio
Todor, a Serbian smuggler in Trieste, Italy, earns his daily bread by smuggling fake brand cigarettes. He sails out in a small boat to collect his freight if there is enough mist to make his illegal mission possible. One day he reluctantly accepts a much larger cargo. In the crate he finds a wounded and drugged woman. Todor decides not to deliver the freight and takes the woman home with him. He takes a chest full of stones to his client and it soon becomes apparent that he has got himself into big trouble with this manoeuvre. Todor takes care of the woman, who slowly but surely overcomes her fear of him. By the time he manages to get her a passport, an unbreakable bond has silently grown between them and he asks her to go away with him. Fate decides otherwise.
First off this is a live broadcast from 1966, Trieste. The picture is a nice black and white, and sound is in digital and DTS and is good. As for the cast, D'Angelo is very touching as Elvira, she is more of the stand and deliver singer of the old school, but that is not distracking for myself. She is a colortura soprano with a light sound, she was a student of Toti dal Monte and had a span at the MET from 1961 to 1968, where she shared productions with singers like Sutherland, Scotto, and Peters. If you like your belcanto with plenty of high notes (plenty of high d's and e's)you will enjoy her performance. Her mad scene (only slightly cut) is a high point in the performance as are all the scenes she's in. The rest of the cast is good and the Arturo Luciano Saldari sings well minus a high note or two. The main drawback here is the score is cut by over 40 mins. I am guessing that is was the tradition of the time. Overall a nice vintage performance.
