Search - Puccini - Tosca (remastered) on DVD

Tosca! Rome! Youth!

Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 11/07/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Tosca was the first opera I ever saw, in 1964, from the last row of the topmost balcony of the Rome Opera. I went expecting not to be impressed, feeling a twenty-something surliness toward "bourgeois" art. Fortunately, it was a grand production, though I can't remember who sang or conducted, and I've loved opera ferociously ever since. I was living at the time in an apartment just outside the Campo dei Fiori, with a close-up view out my window of the great domed church of San Andrea, where the first act of Tosca unfolds. The opera stage was a near-perfect recreation of that church, where I often sat and thought. I'd never seen such stagecraft before, and the recollection of its impact makes me think that opera should always maintain its tradition of visual magnificence, if only to dazzle the neophyte.

I've kept that apartment for nearly forty years now, and being there for a few days, I watched this Tosca. How could I give it less than five stars, when it seems so true to what I saw first? I have to agree with the review by "fiordiligi" that Behrens isn't Tosca, however well she sings. Domingo is almost too forceful for Cavaradossi, that eternal wuss in revolutionary plumage, but who can complain about such vocal command? The character who makes Tosca, however, is Scarpia, a villain so odious one anticipates his destruction gleefully even after seeing the opera many times. It's the villains who make melodrama appealing; the heroes are always mawkish or wispy, and the heroines are never quite fully human. Cornell MacNeil is superb as Scarpia, both vocally and visually. He's not much of a physical actor, I suppose, but the skillful use of camera close-ups reveals his face to be a mobile mask of hatefulness. The cinematography of this DVD is so good that I have to place it on a par with the singing. If you can't afford time-travel to Rome in 1964, I'd say this is at least a fine evening's consolation."

Excellent

E. Fittin | Morristown, NJ United States | 07/13/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Excellent audio-video! Always a pleasure to see a Met/Zefarelli production. While the "movie" versions are very well done, I prefer to see the staged versions and the Met and Franco are tops! This a remarkably crisp image for a older production. The remastering is superb and the cast is world-class, of course."

Splendid!

A music student | 12/25/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Wonderful! All this talk of bad acting, poor voices, unintelligent casting is some reviewers' attempt to make themselves feel important. It's opera, and it's Puccini, so forgiving larger-than-life gestures, scenery, and emotions is not only easy to do, but necessary. All three leads embody their characters well, and in the opera house, it must have been magnificent. On film, it's a wonderful taste of what some of us never got the chance to see."