Tosca
June 15, 2006
Cincinnati Opera
- Composer
- Giacomo Puccini
- Libretto
- Guiseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
- Conductor
- Giordano Bellincampi
- Floria Tosca
- Aprile Millo
- Mario Cavaradossi
- Antonello Palombi
- Baron Scarpia
- Mark Delavan
Although I am willing to acknowledge Puccini as the greatest Italian Opera composer since Verdi, I don't really like him that much. I suppose it indicates that I am not really an opera fan.
Tosca, the opera about an opera diva, is supposed to be about grand passions: love, deceit, lust, and murder. But I find the characters too shallow for anything grand.
In the first act, Floria Tosca, the title character, is a vain beauty, driven by petty jealousy. She lacks the fiery sexuality of Carmen. Although she develops somewhat later in the second act, I don't think she ever achieves the depth of character of Violetta in LaTraviata. She is easily manipulated by the evil Scarpia. She remains a superficial caricature of a woman. Her final, heroic gesture, jumping off the parapet to avoid capture and humiliation, seems merely melodramatic. I never developed much sympathy for the silly woman.
It did not help that she was played by a caricature of an opera star. The soprano was huge, so fat that it was difficult to imagine her inspiring passionate love. Worse, her voice was fat as well. She had a big, sometimes beautiful sound, but with such a wide vibrato that I was often unsure of what note she was singing.
In contrast, the tenor was magnificent. His voice was bright and clear, large enough to beheard over the orchestra, but also expressive. He soared to the glorious high notes withease. His vibrato was expressive, but never blurred the pitch. On stage, he was by no means slim: he had the physique typical of an opera star. However, he was able to portray the handsome young painter believably. He fulfills the tradition of the Italian tenor.
In the third act, the lovers sing a duet in octaves. The ensemble was mediocre, as is often the case in opera. However, in this case, the difficulties were clear: the tenor sung with clarity, expression, and even articulation; the soprano made mush.
The bass baritone, portraying the evil Scarpia, was excellent. I do not think that the operatic ideal of the voice is very kind to basses: they come off as thick and heavy. However, it is great for playing bad guys, and this guy sang it with gusto. He has a big voice, and he used it to great effect. (The reviewer in the Enquirer had a different opinion: he though the guy's voice was not big enough, and that he was altogether too polite for the evil Scarpia.)
Musically, I found the second act to be the most interesting. I also found it to be the only part that I was engaged in the plot of the opera as well, though there is very little for the tenor to do other than cry out in pain. In this act, Scarpia does much of the singing. Early in the act, there is an off-stage performance providing a musical backdrop to the action on the stage. I found the writing very effective. Later, there is a musical hint of a march to the scaffold that serves as an introduction to a lovely aria for the soprano. (I was very engaged at the beginning of this, but later noticed that my mind had wandered away: I had lost interest after a few minutes of the soprano.) I think the music portrays the killing of the villain Scarpia effectively. In fact, this was the one piece of acting by the soprano that I found convincing. I also like the way the music ends the act: it appears to come to rest on a long chord. The chord is repeated and held as if the final chord, butit is not the tonic. The chord progression continues to the true tonic later, ending quickly, gracefully, as it comes to its true point of rest.
The first and third acts have some wonderful moments for the tenor, but the music as a whole did not engage me n the same way. The end of the third act, where Tosca realizes that the execution of her lover was not a sham, is discovered to have killed Scarpia, and jumps off the parapet, simply did not come off in this performance. I think it is too brief in the context of the opera, but it might simply be that the soprano has to do something to make it work that she couldn't do. It was unfortunate that she had to move across the stage and jump off the wall at the very end of the opera: it was not her best moment.
Did I mention that I didn't like the soprano? To be fair, she represents an aesthetic that I do not share. For her, opera is about the voice, the large, beautiful, passionate voice. Nothing else really matters: not physique, not stagecraft, not even many of the things that I associate with musicianship. In an article that I read today, she talks about how she loves Tosca, "because she knows there's a magic, … She's unafraid to feel." She complains, with some justification, about directors who want model-slim singers, and are willing to sacrifice the great operatic sound, the "bigger-than-life emotion." She is proud to represent "a style of singing that's not out there anymore".
This goes back to what I like least about opera: its overblown voices shouting out their overblown passions. It is also the reason that I do not like Puccini that much: this is really what he is about.
However, I have to think that Puccini would have appreciated the clear tone of the tenor, Palombi. You can have passion, and still be able to hear the music.
6/17/2006
© 2006 J.P. Lund