Tosca’s dress
So the question was raised (on opera-l, actually, but La Cieca doesn’t mind discussing it in more downmarket venues): in Luc Bondy’s production of Tosca, Karita Mattila appears in the third act in an entirely new outfit, a sort of tailored trenchcoat of dark leather-like fabric, but whatever she’s wearing, isn’t is a mistake?
Isn’t it Puccini’s intention, or at least most audiences’ notion of Puccini’s intention, that the Roman diva should appear at the Castel Sant’Angelo in the same gown she wore to sing at the gala at Palazzo Farnese and to slaughter Scarpia? Isn’t this yet more evidence of Bondy’s (and, by extension, all those silly stage directors’) ignorance of tradition and contempt for the text?
No.
In the Sardou original La Tosca, Scarpia’s headquarters is located in the Castel Sant’Angelo; therefore after her act of self-defense, Tosca needs merely to go to another part of the fort to rescue Mario, a matter of minutes. Sardou has established earlier in Act 4 that Tosca and Mario have been held at the fort for several hours since they were arrested at his villa. Thus the time line of the action is not only plausible, but is clearly demonstrated to the audience to be so.
But not in the opera. In condensing a five-act, six-setting drama to three acts, Illica and Giacosa provided Puccini with a somewhat different set of situations from Sardou’s. Tosca is questioned not at the Castel Sant’Angelo but at the Palazzo Farnese, not in the wee hours, but immediately following her appearance at a post performance there. Mario’s execution, though, remains scheduled for dawn the following morning at Sant’Angelo.
Now, we are told at the beginning of the second act that the band downstairs is “strumming gavottes” to fill time until the arrival of the diva. Surely we cannot be expected to believe that the Queen of Naples would hang around a ballroom until dawn waiting to hear a measly three-minute cantata, or that even so capricious a diva as Tosca would have the gall to insult the royal lady by standing her up this way. So the librettists are stuck with at least a few hours for Tosca to (ahem) kill between her murder of Scarpia at Palazzo Farnese and her (just pre-dawn) arrival at Sant’Angelo.
Now, here’s the problem. Tosca would hardly require three hours to travel from one location to the other, since the distance between them is barely one kilometer. So the librettists added a line for Tosca in Act 3 with no parallel in the play, “Senti… l’ora è vicina; io già raccolsi / oro e gioielli… una vettura è pronta.” What took her so long? Why, she has been busy during those hours gathering her gold and jewels — to defray the cost of the planned sea voyage — and hiring a carriage for the journey to Civitavecchia.
Under these circumstances, logically she would surely change her (blood-stained, easily identifiable, impractical for traveling) dress as well. If Puccini didn’t want her to change her dress, he shouldn’t have allowed the line about “gathering gold and jewels” to stand.
Carol Vaness takes the leap. Note the red silk dress which has held up remarkably well against attempted rape, bloodstains and sight-reading a cantata with a very tricky high C.
But, I hear someone complaining, we always see Tosca in her red dress with a plain dark woolen mantle thrown over it, so surely that must be right! But this drab cloak — can one really imagine the great diva’s wearing such a thing to a royal audience at Palazzo Farnese earlier that night? “So where did she come by it?” one should ask. But nobody ever does, because opera goers are so innured to sloppy traditional habits (many of them contrary to the composer’s stated or implied intentions) that they mistake what they’ve always seen for what is right.
To use an example from another opera, how many times have we seen the entrance of the cigarette girls in the first act of “Carmen” staged along these lines: the bell rings, the doors of the factory open, and the girls saunter out. Eventually Carmen arrives, last of the workers to take her break, and after a hiatus barely long enough to sing the Habanera, all the females return to the drudgery of tobacco-rolling.
This is of course nonsense. Both bells we hear are calling the girls back to work after they have taken a long midday meal and siesta. As with school bells or theater bells, the first bell is a warning, then the next bell is “final.” In fact, the text of the chorus for the young men says very clearly “La cloche a sonné; nous, des ouvrières: Nous venons ici guetter le retour.” And yet, even now one only rarely sees what “the composer intended,” i.e., the cigarette girls returning to the factory, with Carmen taking her own sweet time getting back to work.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t snipe at those darned stage directors for disrepecting the libretto, then turn right around and say, “Oh, well, in this case I’m used to seeing the libretto flouted, so I’m going to make an exception.”
The dress issue could really go either way and doesn’t really bother me. For me, it’s earlier in Act Two when Tosca makes her entrance. Before her entrance, Tosca is singing the cantata offstage. Scarpia is distracted by this music and closes the window to continue with Mario’s interrogation. Tosca makes her entrance literally seconds after this window is closed. I’ve always wondered how she could get up to Scarpia’s apartment so soon. Technically, the cantata’s not even finished at the point Scarpia closes the window. And wouldn’t she of taken some bows after finishing the cantata?
Agreed in all aspects
I guess I didn’t spend enough time in the Parallel Universe. Back to PU for me.
quoth-
Thank you, but the bat is there. It is overstated in that he, oops she, is making a very strong response, in my opinion too strong about an issue begun on another blog. Without that context, and context seems to be central here, the piece which is thought out seems far too earnest, almost overzealous. I agree with Richard and others in that the dress is “no big deal”. Though I appreciate, and yes, really admire Zef’s for historical reasons and for the artistic effort that is central to his formula, I do not think that his Tosca or his other productions are in anyway definitive. No way. Tosca comes close but no cigar. But to outright trash his works because they are “done” does not acknowledge what was right. Why not?
I refuse to believe that anyone can just reduce the noise about the Bondy version to “people hate it because it is not Zef’s”. Come on. It is bad- you know it when you see it, if not when you hear it which I think IS more important. Again, even a regional Tosca was better than this Bondy. Bondy is not bad, this Tosca is and for all it was supposed to be, it is a bomb. Why does it matter?
It matters because on principle, Gelb is right, new productions must be created. Absolutely.
However, the measure of what is right is not a gamble if there is good judgement. That is more relevant. Forget the dress.
Gee, I thought I was wrong.
Thank you.
Actually….not really. Good, yes, better than Mattila, yes, but Brilliant? Nah, not really her role.
She technically (depending on tempi) has about about a minute, which COULD be enough time to sing a last high note, take a bow and run up to Scarpia’s office…if it’s on the first floor. But yeah, it’s close.
Tosca’s dress was not the mistake so much as Mattila’s singing of the role.
Wrong as Manon Lescaut, and wronger still as Tosca, and most of all, that wrong, wronger, wrongest schmatte she’s donned in the terzo atto. Looks to have been purchased on the banks of the Tiber at the famous outdoor Roman flea market, Porta Portese.
All wrong.
LC’s post did not discuss the relative merits of the two Tosca productions. She has done that elsewhere, including (if we can assume that Mr. Jordan speaks for her) in the pages of the New York Post. Here, in fact, she didn’t even mention the Met’s previous production. She simply addressed a relatively minor detail—but one that detractors have presented as proof of Bondy’s failings. If I may extrapolate from her quite (in my eyes) temperate posting, she was saying “Go ahead and disparage the Bondy production. But don’t use the costume change as a reason.”
Still, it seems that any suggestion that the Bondy production isn’t putrid in all respects strikes you as an “overstatement.”
(In case you’re wondering, I myself found the Bondy production uninspired and dull–a true dud, with the unexpected effect of making Zeffirelli’s frou-frou nonsense look good in comparison.)
It’s even more apparent in the Bondy staging, as she enters via the left staircase and walks around a bit, way before her line “Mario, tu qui?”