User Reviews

I rate very few opera productions low, but as a huge opera enthusiast, a fan of Tosca and an admirer of Karita Mattila, this production really fell flat. I have consistently been impressed by the Met, but this is one of about four or so productions that didn't do much for me, and until now I had never seen a bad production of Tosca.

Okay I will get the good things out of the way. The music is unquestionably brilliant, it is for me Puccini's darkest and perhaps most tragic score and hugely compelling from the violent first notes to the hair-raising finale. The orchestral playing is very good and the conducting brings out the power and pathos of the score excellently.

As for the cast, there was only really one that impressed me, George Gognidze as Scarpia. I don't consider it among the great performances of the role, not like Gobbi, Raimondi and Milnes, but his voice is filled with menace and he is suitably repellent.

Marcelo Alvarez sings wonderfully, E Lucevan E Le Stelle was pretty much the only big aria of this production that did anything for me, he sings with confidence and a ringing top. However, I found him disappointingly unexciting as an actor, sometimes he stands and sings and in the more emotional scenes he is a little too melodramatic for my tastes. Who knows, maybe more cynical roles like the Duke of Mantua suits him more?

I was very disappointed in Karita Mattila. I happen to like Mattila a lot. I saw her as Elisabetta(Don Carlo), as Leonore(Fidelio), as Salome(Salome) and as Eva(Die Meistersinger Von Nurnberg), and she's a fine Jenufa too, and I loved her in all those roles as they showed a powerful but not ugly voice and somebody who could act. I am not sure whether it was the stage direction, whether it was the wrong role or whether it was an off night, but particularly in Vissi D'Arte she is so tense in her face and Tosca is made very passive here. Her singing unfortunately isn't much better, there are intonation problems perhaps due to the voice being forced and her middle and lower registers are colourless and unsteady.

Visually this Tosca is unappealing. The High Definition may be fantastic, but the sets especially are really drab and lack intimacy. Act 1 looks very stark and cavernous like a warehouse, and act 2 is every bit as barren. Act 3 is the only one that is fitting. The costumes also didn't do much for me, the principals are okay perhaps, but I hated the modern hooker clothes.

But it is Luc Bondy's staging that spoils this Tosca. Judging by an interview regarding Tosca, Bondy perhaps doesn't seem aware of what Verismo opera and theatre is, nor does he seem to have an understanding of the opera or its characters. It actually makes us question why he even did the job in the first place. And Bondy's work here is some of the most inept staging of any opera production I've seen. A lot of it is very extreme such as Tosca taking a sword to Caveradossi's painting, Scarpia kissing the statue of the Virgin Mary with the crowd freezing in horror at the end of act 1 and the worst Scarpia at the beginning of act 2 with hookers.

Tosca may be jealous when she sees the painting, but that jealous for any act of violence? As for the other two, Bondy maybe did all this to emphasise Scarpia's evil. This wasn't needed, we know he is evil, we don't need to be bashed around the head with it and have needless staging to accompany it. I also didn't like how Tosca tells Caveradossi to die, so unintentionally funny, nor did I like the staging of Tosca's death, it should be hair-raising but the fake dummy cheapened this effect. Then when Tosca murders Scarpia she doesn't do what is usually done which is to place crucifixes on his body, I know the 1976 film didn't do that either but at least Tosca did something instead that fitted with her state of mind. Here Tosca just casually sits down on the couch fanning herself, is this normally an action of a woman who has just killed a man? You tell me.

Overall, I love Tosca, but this production is the worst production of it I've seen. Thank goodness for the performance of Scarpia and the quality of the orchestral playing and conducting, they save it from being a complete disaster. 4/10 Bethany Cox