The New York Times, in its never-ending quest to find more expensive and less relevant ways to cover the arts, has dispatched Daniel J. Wakin to Rome for an in-depth conversation with the man of the hour, Franco Zeffirelli. The legendary stage director, conceding that he has not had a fair chance to tell his side of the Tosca story in the pages of the Times, agreed to unprecedented access for Wakin and the paper’s videographers. A snippet of the hard-hitting interview follows the jump.