dark lady
Preseason puffery has commenced for the Met’s 2009 opening night production of Tosca, to star that noted brunette Karita Mattila. A release from the company’s press office today details the various ancillary events associated with the September 21 performance, including the first “Open House” of the season (i.e., the final dress rehearsal on September 17 at 11 a.m.), HD video relays in Lincoln Center Plaza and Times Square, broadcasts on Sirius and XM satellite radio and web radio streaming via metopera.org.
Devotees of New York City street art will be delighted to hear that the Met intends to “blanket buses and phone kiosks with images of Karita Mattila… photographed by Brigitte Lacombe” beginning August 31.
While we’re on the subject, La Cieca is looking for one or more volunteers to serve as guest hostess or hostesses (of either gender) to preside over a live chat here at parterre.com beginning, oh, sixish on the night of the 21st, for those listening at home.
Those of you planning to tweet from the live event are asked to inform your doyenne so that she may link to and possibly aggregate your twitterings. If any among you understand what that last sentence means, do let La Cieca in on it. Anyway, be you potential hostess or twitteress, please email La Cieca with your plans.
Now, where were we? Ah, yes, one more factoid leaps to the eye in the Met’s press release. The Squeamish (“Who are they, a sect?”) will be reassured to note that the director of the new Tosca, Luc Bondy, has no intention of updating the mise–en–scène beyond the Napoleonic era the good Lord and dear Victorien Sardou intended.
To be sure, in his sound bite James Levine alludes to “the melodramatic vitality of one of the great Hitchcock films,” which to La Cieca’s sensitive ear sounds like we’re going to be seeing contrasty, tightly-focused film noir style shafts of light. Illuminated by those shafts, though, will be Empire gowns, frock coats, puffy shirts and other sartorial comfort food.
As long as Scarpia wears a wig. It’s 1800, and if a civic official doesn’t wear a wig, he’s a supporter of Napoleon and the French Revolution; Scarpia’s job (if not his head) would be forfeit if he gave it up. He’s working for Marie Antoinette’s sister, remember! He’s on duty; he wears a wig. It’s important.
LeperEllo you are so right. Friedkin (and Woody Allen for Gianni Schicchi) stayed out of the way to create magnificent portrayals of what the composer had in mind. Yes, the Suor Angelica was the best ever but I cringe at what SFO might present in the coming season.
#22 Quattrofontane: My understanding is that SFO is borrowing the NYCO production, which places Angelica in a hospital ward? Not sure how they handle Tabarro or Schicchi.
I don’t mind tweakings, updatings, new interpretations, so long as the music and the story are not interfered with.
I loved Laurent Pelly’s take on Fille du Regiment. He understood the thrust of the music and worked with it, while changing the time and place of the story. Trusted the composer completely and knew how to work with him. Wonderful treatment.
I didn’t care for Zimmerman’s Lucia, where she put a photographer in there, and used lots of stagey fussiness to distract us from all that singing stuff in that sextet thingy. With a nice big popping camera flash at the end so we knew it was time to clap. She had no trust in (or awareness of) what the music was telling us, apparently; so instead those 3 minutes of complex contrapuntal singing had to be Filled With Something! Otherwise, we might have to Sit Still and Listen To It.
BTW: Hans Lick on the subject of “Tosca” and appropriate headgear: when Grace Moore did “Tosca” at the Met she had Valentina do her costumes. Valentina supposedly discovered from reading about the court etiquette of the period that unmarried ladies were not allowed to wear tiaras to court functions. Therefore all those Toscas wearing tiaras in Act II were making sartorial faux pas. Valentina gave Grace Moore a gold lamé turban a la Mme. de Stael for Act II which supposedly gave her height and looked fabulous.
BTW: Aren’t woman always supposed to keep their heads covered in church? The famous Act I Tosca picture hat has become a thing of the past – I say bring it back with the walking stick. Magda always had the hat and the walking stick in Act I I have been told. La Bernhardt still knows best.
The “head covered in church” thing is nebulous. It is true that women were supposed to cover their heads when praying or attending services in church, but Tosca’s first entrance into Sant’Andrea is not “official.”
Don’t most Toscas still have at least a veil or a scarf or something? The big hat, I’m afraid, tends to look too “Hello Dolly” even if it’s someone besides Aprile Millo singing.
Gualtier, didn’t Shirley Verrett do the turban thing in Tosca too? Maybe this thread will offer another opportunity for La C to whip out my favourite parterre search tag: turbans.
Two threads from Hitchcock are the McGuffin – the thing that is so important to the principals, but not particularly to us. Someone pointed out that TOSCA has that, since few of us are really caught up in the politics and loyalties of the piece.
And there is the “protagonist out of water” – the person caught in a web, not of his/her making, and in a world (s)he is unfamiliar with. I’m thinking of dear Tosca herself, of course. Compare to Cary Grant in NORTH BY NORTHWEST or Robert Donat in THE 39 STEPS, or even Jimmy Stewart in REAR WINDOW. There are others.
I’m glad the MET is getting a new TOSCA. Great masterpieces need fresh air just like the rest of us.
The covering of the head thing in church isn’t so strictly observed in Italy – at least in the part where I live … although in the 19th century I sincerely doubt that any Catholic woman would go into a church without covering her head.
I don’t know the Tosca story too well. But if memory serves Tosca was an orphan (?) and she raised in a convent (?). In that case one could reason that she would always cover her head – the fact she brings the flowers for the Madonna right at the beginning and all that.
However, one can also reason that she IS a rebel and as a celebrity doesn’t allow herself to be regulated by society’s norms.
Someone mentioned Milla Andrew, the last valid British Tosca other than Phyllis Cannan. Still, we can import Commonwealth Artist Cheryl Barker from Down Under.
There is a link of sorts between Hitchcock and Tosca: Hitch is supposed to have said (while filming The Birds) “I always believe in following the advice of the playwright Sardou. He said, ‘Torture the women!’”