Tosca

Tosca is more involving in this film version than in most stage performances. That is astounding. Usually, close-ups of opera performances spoil the effect of the music. The acting and looks of most singers detract from their musical performance. Also, melodrama is out and out funny when it's filmed realistically. But in this film the three leads are fine actors and look their parts. Gheorghiu is physically a magnificent diva. It helps that the lip-synching stops at times. For example Tosca and Caravadossi embrace and kiss while the singing continues, as if in their thoughts. They look right and it sounds right. Black and white video of the taping is occasionally intercut with the full color performance. This is jarring but adds to the magic of the final performance, which seemss effortless. Instead of filming the opera realistically the scenes are made theatrical and larger than life by using impressionistic backgrounds. It feels like a stage performance - only you can see everything perfectly. Wonderful! The film makes me want to hear the opera again. The sound system at the movie theater was no substitute for the real thing or for a CD. But I know that the images from this movie will flash up next time I listen.

Many people seem to hate the style this film took - blending the black and white behind-the-scenes shots of the actors and actresses recording, along with the casually-dressed orchestra itself - in with the gorgeous sets the actual "production" takes place on, but I myself loved it. It took a completely different aspect on my favorite opera and made it more down-to-earth. However, the grainy outside footage was horrendous, and the only thing I have to complain on about this movie.

Angela Gheorghiu's singing was absolutely top-notch, as was a fantastically evil Scarpia. All the singers played their parts marvelously, and led to a very believable performance "on stage." This is personally my favorite production of Tosca, and with the movie's direction, led to a beautiful behind-the-scenes view of the faces behind the faces that work together to create an opera's production itself! Highly recommended from me.

Given the prohibitive costs of shooting and marketing a film - any film, on any subject - any director rash enough to try a "filmed opera" faces a double challenge. It is no longer enough to make an Opera Film: the sort popular in Italy in the 40s and 50s, when opera still enjoyed a wide audience. It is now necessary to make an Opera Film For People Who Hate Opera: one with enough populist appeal to win over millions of film-goers who are either indifferent to opera or can't bear it.

It's a well-nigh impossible trick, and only a handful of directors have come anywhere close to pulling it off. Still, I defy even the most tone-deaf of operaphobes to watch Powell and Pressburger's 1951 Tales of Hoffmann or Losey's 1979 Don Giovanni or Zeffirelli's 1982 La Traviata, and not adore every moment! As for Benoit Jacquot's new film of Tosca...well, he seems to have gone one better than all the others, and turned out the first-ever Opera Movie By A Director Who Obviously Hates Opera, So Why Did He Bother In The First Place?

With its thunderous blood-and-sex soaked libretto and romantically hysterical score, Giacomo Puccini's Tosca is perhaps the greatest melodrama - spoken or sung - ever to hit the stage. As TS Eliot once wrote of a novel by Wilkie Collins; "It has no merit beyond melodrama, but it has every merit that melodrama can have." No piece of musical theatre on earth is less suited to the odious cod-Brechtian 'distancing devices' that Jacquot employs in his deluded attempts to seem avant-garde. If you cannot wallow in the heart-thumpingly overwrought melodramatics of Tosca, you should not go near them at all.

So what can be the logic of splicing in black-and-white footage of the high-priced cast as they record the vocal score? Or those awful jiggly, grainy shots of those monuments in Rome where the action takes place? Or forcing Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorgiu - the reigning Golden Couple on the international opera scene - to speak the dialogue 'live' while singing it on the soundtrack? This sort of hollow trickery can only outrage opera fans, while leaving the vast majority of the public as bewildered as they ever were.

So Jacquot is both a Philistine and a moron, and his film should be an out-and-out disaster BUT...lacking even the courage of his own puny convictions, most of the time he forgets to be Post-Modern and just gives us the melodrama straight. The result is nothing short of miraculous. As Floria Tosca, an opera diva struggling to save her lover from the clutches of an evil Chief of Police, Angela Gheorghiu is - vocally and dramatically - a rival to our memory of Maria Callas. With her torrent of raven hair, triumphal cheekbones and sulphurous eyes, her screen presence is an echo of Sigourney Weaver.

A pity that her most erotic love interest is not the romantic and revolutionary painter Mario Cavaradossi. (Roberto Alagna, aka Mr. Gheorghiu, lags far behind his wife in vocal skills and shows not the faintest sign of talent as an actor.) Rather, it is the evil police chief Baron Scarpia who deserves to win her heart. Not only a veteran of opera films - including Losey's sumptuous Don Giovanni - Ruggero Raimondi has also acted 'straight' roles, notably as a dotty French nobleman obsessed with immortality in the 1983 Alain Resnais film La Vie Est Un Roman. With his haggard eyes and glittering black greatcoat, Raimondi has an almost vampiric quality. Perhaps the sexiest, most seductive screen villain since Basil Rathbone.

And so - irony of ironies - this Opera Film By A Director Who Hates Opera turns out to be a near-classic, a close rival to Zeffirelli or Losey or Powell-Pressburger. Let's just hope that nobody ever gives Jacquot another opera to direct. Next time, he might really wreck it! Let's hope, on her next project, that Angela Gheorghiu wields her ever-increasing clout and hires a film-maker who actually knows what opera is. Isn't Gerard Corbiau in need of a job? Now that I'd love to see.

David Melville

My initial reaction to this movie was negative. It took me a while to get used to the technique of showing the singers, musicians and the conductor and then rapidly splicing footage of the singers performing in costume on the set of the opera. However, I think this experiment gradually begins to weave a spell over the audience (consider what Lawrence Olivier did with his film of "HENRY V"). The artificial world of theatre and opera explodes into a reality filled with excitement and vitality.

The orchestra bursts into a throbbing overture that hints at the turmoil that bubbles at the tragic heart of Puccini's opera. Antonio Pappano conducts like a man possessed, he fights and wrestles the score to fiery heights and the music rises with a sweaty passion.

Roberto Alagna sings and acts the role of Cavaradossi with enough conviction, although Placido Domingo did an electrifying job for Giofranco De Bosio in the 1976 movie. Alagna may not have the acting ability of Domingo but he certainly more than makes up for it in the singing department. His natural charisma also shines through in the close-ups that are used frequently to heighten psychological tension.

Ruggero Raimondi plays the part of Scarpia with venom and overtones of violent malice. At times he almost resembles a rapist stalking his next victim. There are shades of his magnificent portrayal of the decadent Don Giovanni (remember the Joseph Losey film?), for example, when he's at the dinner table we see Scarpia admiring his own smirking reflection in the glinting knife. His aria, in this scene, is about how he devours women until his appetite is sated. He proudly boasts about his varied taste in differnt kinds of females and the whole aria is very sinister and disturbing. His acting is splendid and his singing voice is still virile and strong.

Tosca, sung and acted by the earthy Angela Gheorghiu, is first seen as almost bloodless. She is wearing a pale yellow dress and there's no trace of make-up on her anxious face. We can see insecurity and jealousy lined in her face and eyes. She peeks around like a hunted animal which has lost the will to live. This is the way Puccini wrote the part for his heroine and this superb singer delivers a haunting performance. In the latter sections of the opera we see her in a blood-red dress that swirls behind her like a crimson river. Now her eyes are raging black coals that glint with fire and her ruby lips shine with lust. Her cheeks are creamy and flushed and her heaving breast indicates the trembling fear that courses through her lascivious body. Her scene with Scarpia is erotic, the fire leaps and strange shadows dance around the claustrophobic room. This whole scene is extremely erotic, there is a definite sexual spark between the snake-like Scarpia and the radiant sexiness of Tosca. Her voice is tinged with a smouldering huskiness.

The climax, on the top of the gothic castle is beautifully lit, Tosca's red dress still glows and her face has a hue of cold blue (the lighting in this section would please fans who enjoy the works of Mario Bava or Dario Argento). This time we see the tragic frailty in Tosca's eyes, there are hints of suspicion and fear and the close-ups, once again, are very effective in conveying her emotional state.

This film is a very good example of opera being translated over into Art House Cinemas and the experiment of inter-cutting footage of singers in the theatre and the film sets is by-and-large successful and will bear repeated viewings. One hopes more adaptations will follow and thus allow opera the freedom to reach new venues.

Seek out this pulsating film and allow your emotions to run riot with passion and excitement.

She was the main motif to see this adaptation. Andit is a profound beautiful Tosca, first, for the fine way to translate the emotion and the drama in a sensual, seductive, provocative manner. More than an admirable show, a fine demonstration of the art and wise use of the generosity of a great opera. Not less, one of splendid performances of Angela Gheorghiu.