Tag Archives: Tosca
Tosca in HD 2024
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd November 2024Puccini’s political melodrama was presented at the Met for the 1017th time. This performance was the fourth presentation of the opera on the Met’s HD series. All three leads sang their roles for the first time at the Met in this season’s run. David McVicar’s traditional staging works very well. Presenting a Puccini opera as…
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Finale 42 – Tosca
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 30th October 2024Puccini’s Tosca has been an audience favorite since its premiere in 1900. It has everything one could ask for in an opera: beautiful and dramatically apt music, a gripping story that wastes not a line or note, and one of opera’s most spectacular endings. Tosca, an operatic diva, jumps from the parapet of the Castel…
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Vissi d’Arte
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 1st December 2021Giacomo Puccini knew as much about the workings of the theater as anyone whoever entered one. Accordingly, his mature works are models of dramatic cohesion. He lashed his librettists like galley slaves until they gave him scripts that satisficed his very high standards. These standards are why he produced only 12 operas in 40 years…
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Scarpia Sings Again
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 22nd March 2020Baritones are rarely heroes in opera. But they usually have at least one redeeming characteristic. Rigoletto loves his daughter, Macbeth accepts his fate with manly resignation, etc. Iago in Verdi’s Otello is 100% villain. There’s nothing remotely good about him. He’s the devil’s spawn. Puccini isn’t as generous to baritones as was Verdi. But he…
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Tosca in HD 2018
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 27th January 2018Tosca has given the Met a lot of trouble recently, or perhaps it’s the other way around. First, this new staging replaced Luc Bondy’s 2009 production which lasted for only 59 performances. Everybody seemed to hate it. I thought, by the standards of today’s stagings of the standard repertory, that it was pretty tame. But…
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Disciogliea
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 17th September 2017Puccini’s Tosca contains one of the most beautiful and famous tenor arias in opera – ‘E lucevan le stelle’ which takes place shortly after the start of the third and final act. The line given below (with a literal English translation) requires, for its full realization, an effect which is beyond the abilities of almost…
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Vittoria Tenors Identified
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 18th April 2017On January 2 of this year I posted 22 examples of 22 different tenors singing Vittoria! Vitoria!! from the second act of Tosca. Their identities are below. Giuseppe Di Stefano Jonas Kaufmann Franco Corelli Luciano Pavarotti Amadeo Zambon Mario Del Monaco Beniamino Gigli Jussi Björling Renato Cioni Jose Carreras Placido Domingo Giacomo Aragall Giorgio Lamberti…
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Vittoria! Vittoria!!
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 2nd January 2017The tenor’s big moment in the second act of Puccini’s Tosca when is he gets to sing “Victory” twice. He’s just discovered that his favorite military dictator (Napoleon) has won the Battle of Marengo instead of the reverse which was the initial news of the affair to reach Rome. He’s been brought onstage after a torture…
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Tosca in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 10th October 2009The Met’s new production of Puccini’s “shabby little shocker” (the only utterance Joseph Kerman will be remembered for) Tosca was broadcast throughout the world today in HD. It was booed at its premiere on the Met’s opening night of this season. Let’s get this out of the way first. There’s nothing in this pedestrian mounting…
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