Tosca de Giacomo Puccini

Although many may dislike this film and its direction, I found that I was really moved and excited by it. I can see how certain aspects of this film may not be to everybody's taste(for example the dodgy outside scenes and the black and white orchestra footage)but to be honest, what does it matter when you have a singer with as beautiful a voice as Angela Gheorghiu! Roberto Alagna's Cavaradossi was a bit wet and pathetic but that could just have been the part. However, Ruggero Raimondi was a truly frightening Scarpia and even when filmed in the recording studio you can see the fire and anger which, in my opinion, is a such a key part of Scarpia's personality. I thought the direction was simple but quite effective at times. I really disliked the outside footage because i felt it wasn't really necessary although it could be a device used to show the seedy side of the situation the characters are in. I found that the close-ups gave you the opportunity to see deep into the personalities of the characters in a way that you can't in an opera house due to the distance between stage and audience. To compare it with another, I have seen parts of Franco Zeffirelli's Tosca staged at ROH in the 60s starring Maria Callas and Tito Gobbi and i can say without doubt that although Callas may have been an exceptional performer, her voice is nothing compared with Angela Gheorghiu-so please, please watch it to have the opportunity to hear the most beautiful voice in the world!

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

A superb cast singing gloriously is compromised by odd and arbitrary aspects of presentation in this film, but memory edits out the nonsense and one is left with the first-class acting and singing in the highly traditional and engaging body of the work. Interestingly, the weakness of Cavaradossi as a character, which is a recognised problem with Puccini's wonderful melodrama,. comes across particularly clearly in this production, while the contrasting strength of Tosca and Scarpia--power versus love, one might say, is outstanding.

A minor moan--no Catholic woman would have gone into a church with uncovered hair in the 19th century--and no Papal policeman would go in with his hat on! But this director has the cultural equivalent of a tin ear.

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.

There's not so many things I can say about it. My favorite opera because of the dramatic and romantic story with the incredible romantic music of Puccini, three strong characters create a matchless atmosphere. Ruggero Raimondi is excellent with his performances on vocal and acting, Angela Gheorghiu have a "dolce" voice and she uses her face good enough but she uses her body some exaggerated in some parts, Raimondi and Gheorghiu are also very suitable physically for unmerciful Scarpia and beautiful Floria Tosca. Roberto Alagna's vocal performance is good. A movie good enough for who loves opera and Puccini, not a perfect directing but generally i liked the movie maybe because of the influence of Puccini's music with some memorable scenes like Scarpia's aria and praying at the end of the first act.