Puccini - Tosca (Remastered)
by Franco Zeffirelli
List Price:
Our Price: $15.47
You Save: $14.51 (48%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $14.94 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Cornell MacNeil, Hildegard Behrens, Italo Tajo, James Courtney, Placido DomingoDirector: Franco Zeffirelli
Brand: Universal Studios
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown); Chinese (Subtitled); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); German (Subtitled); Italian (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); Italian (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Classical, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 127 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-09-12
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Deutsche Grammophon
Movie Reviews of Puccini - Tosca (Remastered)
Movie Review: Tosca! Rome! Youth!
Summary: 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.
Summary of Puccini - Tosca (Remastered)
PUCCINI:TOSCA - DVD MovieThis is the best of Placido Domingo's several video performances as the painter Cavaradossi, lover of the prima donna Floria Tosca and enthusiast of revolutionary ideals in the repressive atmosphere of Napoleonic-era Rome. His colleagues, Cornell MacNeil and Hildegard Behrens, are both seasoned and highly capable performers who make the deadly confrontation between Tosca and the corrupt police chief Scarpia intense and believable. Guiseppe Sinopoli conducts with style and dramatic power. But in many ways the primary reason for wanting Tosca in a video rather than an audio recording is the staging by Franco Zeffirelli--effective for the few thousand who saw it in the opera house but even more effective on camera for the much larger television and home video audience. He shifts easily from the small-scale duets in Act I to the grandiose spectacle of the "Te Deum" just before the curtain. His attention to small details helps build the tension in Act II to its violent climax, and in Act III he gives poignancy to the abrupt shift from hope to despair. The essence of Tosca is melodrama, and the singers, conductor, director, and audience all revel in it. --Joe McLellan
Similar DVD Movies
Puccini: La Boheme: Live from the MetRelease date: 2008-09-16; Published: 2008-09-19; DVD
Best price: $13.24
Price in other shops:
Verdi - Otello / Domingo, Fleming, Morris, Croft, Levine, Moshinsky, Metropolitan OperaUniversal Studios; Release date: 2004-04-13; Published: 2011-10-24; DVD
Best price: $15.80
Price in other shops:
CarmenRelease date: 2011-08-30; DVD
Best price: $18.59
Price in other shops:
Leoncavallo - I Pagliacci / Mascagni - Cavalleria Rusticana / Domingo, Stratas, Pons, Bruson, Obraztsova, PretreVARIOUS; Release date: 2005-06-14; DVD
Best price: $15.80
Price in other shops:
Mascagni:Cavalleria Rusticana/ Leoncavallo: Pagliacci (Metropolitan Opera)Release date: 2011-08-16; DVD
Best price: $11.48
Price in other shops:
Puccini - La Boheme / Pavarotti, Scotto, Niska, Wixell, Plishka, Levine, Metropolitan OperaUniversal Studios; Release date: 2005-10-11; DVD
Best price: $10.17
Price in other shops:
Verdi - Aida / Levine, Domingo, Millo, Metropolitan OperaRelease date: 2000-12-12; Published: 2011-10-24; DVD
Best price: $16.82
Price in other shops:
Verdi - Rigoletto / Luciano Pavarotti, Ingvar Wixell, Edita Gruberova, Victoria Vergara, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Riccardo ChaillyUniversal Studios; Release date: 2006-07-04; Published: 2006; DVD
Best price: $15.80
Price in other shops:
Verdi: La TraviataRelease date: 2008-09-30; DVD
Best price: $16.89
Price in other shops:
Puccini: Turandot at the Metropolitan OperaUniversal Studios; Release date: 2003-08-12; DVD
Best price: $15.73
Price in other shops: