Puccini - Tosca (2000)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Angela Gheorghiu, David Cangelosi, Maurizio Muraro, Roberto Alagna, Ruggero RaimondiBrand: Kultur
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); Italian (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Classical, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.77:1
Running Time: 126 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-10-25
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: KULTUR VIDEO
Movie Reviews of Puccini - Tosca (2000)
Movie Review: The nastiest Scarpia around and a wonderfully dramatic Floria Tosca
Summary: 5 Stars
This film of Tosca has been available in Europe for some time already. And now the Americans can look forward to being able to watch a new and close to perfect film-version of this opera. Tosca is one of the first operas I've ever watched on dvd and it captured me from the very start. This is passionate drama from beginning to end. An incredible adrenaline rush. The music of Giacomo Puccini's play is overwhelming in many senses, it's strong, but also incredibly beautiful and full of emotions. It takes you through your whole register of feelings in about two hours, from fear and jealousy via passion to absolute agony and in the end wild rage and total despair which ends when Tosca is hurling herself from the roof of the castle.
The real stars of this Tosca are Angela Gheorghiu and Ruggero Raimondi. To me, Raimondi is the best Scarpia ever on disc and he surely didn't disappoint me in this film either. His Scarpia is a man you don't mess around with. Raimondi is obviously a man with great authority both on and off stage. While the film is running we are also shown some brief cuts from the recording session in studio and you'll see Raimondi getting up from his chair to sing his part at the same time as you'll see Scarpia enter the church in the first act. He doesn't need costumes or anything else to give you the impression that here comes a really frightening human being. It's also quite obvious that he lusts for Tosca and he is very good in portraying how much strength it takes to refrain himself from just taking her violently.... Raimondi has an absolutely beautiful voice; dark and rich even if he's now becoming an older man and he can sound both nasty as well as strangely attractive. His scenes with Tosca both in the church and in the castle where Cavaradossi is being tortured are outstanding. Watch and listen to him roaring: "Open the doors so she can hear his cries!!!!" Terrifying! And when Tosca begs him to save Cavaradossi he just looks at her, laughing and saying "I..???? You!!!" in the most arrogant manners ever. To me there will never be another Scarpia.
Angela Gheorghiu who's in possession of a wonderful voice is an outstanding Tosca and it's obvious that she loves being in front of the camera. She flirts with both the camera and Cavaradossi. I guess the passionate scenes are easier for Tosca and Cavaradossi in this film, being husband and wife in real life. But here Gheorghiu seduces both Cavaradossi and the viewer. The absolute peak of her performance in this film must be the scenes with Scarpia where she perfectly portrays her despair when Cavaradossi is being tortured. Her voice is capable of doing so without becoming shrill and you won't hear any of the warcries that some other sopranos utter during these scenes. Her facial expressions and other gestures are also very dramatic, but never affected. The scene where she kills Scarpia makes you sit on the edge of your chair. I've seen Gheorghiu in some other operas on dvd, but this is by far her best role ever. Even better than La Traviata.
To me, the disappointment of this film must be Alagna. His acting skills are better than his singing, but even so they can't cover up a voice that in my opinion is too light and I find his constant vibrato somewhat disturbing. His phrasing isn't too good either, which in my opinion ruins his singing. His cries in the torture scene (Ahime!) instantly made me think of those of a whimpering boy. (Listen to Carreras's cries in Karajans recording from 1980. That's how it should be done....)
The sacristan's acting is also better than his singing. Angelottis' singing and acting are adequate, but his role is only a minor role, so it's actually hard to judge how good this singer is. Spoletta's voice I find slightly unpleasant, but I guess that makes him more suitable for this role. He is good in portraying his underlying fear of Scarpia. All in all the supporting cast are doing a good job.
The filming of Benoit Jacquot is a masterpiece; there are so many brilliant effects in this film. You just have to watch for yourself. I also love Antonio Pappanos' conducting which is both energetic and emotive.
If you want an evening of passionate drama, buy this Tosca. I know that I will be watching this again and again in the years to come.
Summary of Puccini - Tosca (2000)
Tosca: A Film by Benoit Jacquot, after the libretto of Puccini?s Opera. With Angela Gheorghiu as Floria Tosca, Roberto Alagna as Mario Cavaradossi, Ruggiero Raimondi as Baron Scarpia. Conducted by Antonio Pappano with the Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. How often has it been said that opera can?t be translated into film? That the camera lens accentuates an opera?s artificiality and turns the protagonists into caricatures? Benoît Jacquot?s masterfully inventive two-hour Tosca, will change the minds of the most diehard opera buffs and win over newcomers to the art. What?s even more astounding is that this is Jacquot?s first venture into opera. Yet, that may be just the point. What makes his film so compellingly audacious is that from the very start he juxtaposes black-and-white scenes of the conductor, Antonio Pappano, and the actor/singers in the recording studio with the staged opera in order to reveal the energy and work that goes into realizing a mighty work of lyrical art and ensemble acting. At other times, he uses soft-focus and grainy black-and-white and color footage of the Roman countryside, the Castel Sant? Angelo and the interiors of Baroque churches to illustrate what the actors are singing off-screen. These scenes add immeasurably to the opera?s enthralling lyricism. Giacomo Puccini?s music and Guiseppe Giacosa?s libretto are mesmerizing and unforgettable, both enhanced by the director?s focus on the drama between the three main protagonists: Floria Tosca (played by the Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu), her lover, the painter and political radical Mario Cavaradossi (played movingly by Roberto Alagna, Gheorghiu?s off-screen husband) and the vilely magnetic Il Barone Scarpia, the fascistic Roman governor (Ruggero Raimondi). From the opening credits of red typeface on black ground, to the surprising black-and-white filming of the conductor guiding the cast with his baton through the opera?s overture and first arias, to the first act in the church, the movie embraces Tosca as a drama of unbridled passions. Through the astute use of hovering overhead shots and swirling camera angles, the film projects and intensifies the emotional upheaval of the three protagonists--the possessively jealous Tosca, the tender and placating Cavaradossi who assures her she has no rivals, and the terrifying Scarpia, determined to capture the Italian fugitive Angelotti (Maurizio Murano). Jacquot demonstrates here how film can strengthen the opera's drama?the silence of the protagonists, their tortured faces, the intensity of their love, their hate, and their fear. In the second act, which takes place in the Palazzo Farnese, the dramatic interplay between Tosca and Scarpia is spellbinding. Scarpia, dining in a darkened room lit only by a roaring fire and candlelight, plots his seduction of Tosca while admiring his contorted face in the gleaming blade of the knife that he also uses to cut a bloody piece of meat. The knife is appropriately prophetic since it is the very blade with which Tosca will kill him later in the scene. Dressed in a dazzling red gown with a sweeping train, Tosca is a stunning contrast to the dark Scarpia. Her fiery sexuality understandably motivates Scarpia's temptation as it leads to his final (albeit well-deserved) doom. The finale on the rooftop of Castel Sant? Angelo has cumulative power, with Tosca leaping off the parapet into the black void after she realizes that Cavaradossi has been shot with real bullets, instead of the promised blanks. Jacquot has filmed the opera exactly as the libretto directs, ideally capturing its drama and lyricism. Even with Tosca's violent ending, Puccini's great art provides catharsis, a transporting emotional release that soars after the deeply felt power of the tragedy. Rachel HunterBenoit Jacquot's filmed Tosca treads a fine line between operatic staginess and cinematic contrivance. As per the libretto, each act takes place in a single setting, but with the singers here miming to a pre-recorded soundtrack. Jacquot freely reminds us of the conceit with cutaways to the recording session itself--revealing conductor, orchestra, and soloists at work--thus a bridge is made between the on-screen action and the music-making itself, and the inherent duality of any opera production is laid refreshingly bare. The same cannot be said for the director's decision to interpolate spoken dialogue over the music in key places--a distraction, not an enhancement.
Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna are glamorous and attractive enough to make the most of their Hollywood-style close-ups; their singing easily bears similar close scrutiny--as anyone who owns the CD soundtrack album will surely already know. If Alagna lacks a little power as Cavaradossi on record, his charismatic screen presence happily compensates; while Gheorghiu is both vocally and physically almost ideal as Tosca. Ruggero Raimondi's Scarpia completes an outstanding trio; and in the pit (or, rather, in the studio) conductor Antonio Pappano handles the drama of Puccini's score without missing a single nuance. Both musically and visually, then, this is a Tosca to treasure. --Mark Walker
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