Tosca's bizarre love triangle keeps us rapt
Saturday October 10 2009
As the nights draw in and the entertainment options multiply, it's good to see the return of a favourite. The MET: Live in HD is the New York Metropolitan Opera at a cinema near you.
The first of nine transmissions from their stage at the Lincoln Center in Manhattan is on tonight, on big screens at 10 venues right around Ireland. Puccini's Tosca sets the ball rolling. This passionate and violent Roman love triangle involving a glamorous opera singer -- Floria Tosca, her artist lover Mario Cavaradossi, and the anti-hero, the chief of police who wants the girl at any price -- hasn't been to everybody's taste.
"A shabby little shocker" was how one critic described it. The English composer Benjamin Britten found it "sickening". Still, it has an enduring popularity. Tosca hinges on Baron Scarpia, the cop, surely one of opera's greatest villains. He usually gets his way. Here, he's on the trail of an escaped prisoner, a rebel, who's a mate of Floria's lover.
The matter of who knows what about the whereabouts of the man on the run offers Scarpia his opportunity. He has Mario tortured, within earshot of Floria, then makes his move. Where is my prisoner hiding, he wants to know.
Floria hears Mario's cries and can take no more. She spills the beans.
But just as Mario is in the process of being let go, news comes through of a battle victory for Napoleon, who's fighting Austrian occupation and is the hero of Italian revolutionaries. Mario's enthusiastic reaction gets him a date with a firing squad.
Only you can save him, the police chief tells Tosca. Name your price, she replies, thinking it's money he wants. It's not money, it's you, is the sneering response. This is the cue for one of opera's most famous, and haunting arias, Vissi d'arte ("I lived for art"). It's Floria Tosca's cry of despair at what has happened to her, when all she wanted was to sing and to love. Curiously, it's her only solo in the whole opera.
Scarpia, the policeman, flushed by yet another success, is prepared to gild the lily. He'll have his executioners fire blanks, and guarantee the pair free passage.
Floria sees her chance. Just as he reaches for her, she lunges at him, a knife from his dinner table in her hand. Scarpia has met his end. But so too, outside on the castle wall, does Mario, for the blanks, the passport to safety, were a sham. Floria is horrified. Guards arrive to arrest her for the murder of their chief. The heroine of the title, though, has the final say. She climbs the wall, and jumps from the parapet to her death.
Vissi d'arte is the stand-out song. Other musical highlights arrive when Mario compares the face of the woman in what he's painting with Floria. Recondita armonia tells of the "Hidden harmony" of their contrasting beauty. E lucevan le stelle ("And the stars were shining") are Mario's thoughts as he awaits the firing squad in Act III.
Tosca is also on lyric tonight. For more info, visit www.operaireland.com
George Hamilton presents The Hamilton Scores on RTE lyric fm from 9.30am each Saturday morning. ghamilton@independent.ie
- George Hamilton
Irish Independent
