Customer Reviews:
It is a good day to Dine!.......2007-11-18
THANK YOU FOR THE Smiles! This is a simple beautiful tale that could have been scripted by Shakespeare. The acting is out of this world, lots of belly laughs and some stunning scenery.
THANK YOU THAK YOU THANK YOU!
Customer Reviews:
The best recording of Tosca.......2004-12-08
This is for sure thes ever recorded Tosca. Cura is great, Patane is a show as Tosca and even Bruson had a superb performance. A must!
Customer Reviews:
Invaluable document.......2005-10-04
This is a conflation of two rare televised appearances of Callas from Covent Garden. The first was filmed in 1962 and Callas is in surprisingly good voice, considering she had almost given up at this time (her only other appearances that year were a series of concerts - no stage appearances at all). The Verdi is sung with a wealth of detail and expression and she acts out all Elisabetta'a emotions vividly, while hardly moving a muscle. Indeed she is so immersed in her singing that when a large brooch she is wearing dislodges and drops to the floor, she barely notices. She then changes completely into a playful, sexy and dangerous Carmen. What a pity she never wanted to sing the role on stage.
The second part of the DVD is a fully staged performance of Act2 of Tosca with Tito Gobbo and Renato Cioni. Why oh why didn't they have the forseight to film the whole thing? Still I guess we should be grateful for what we have. There are faults - the camera work isn't all it should be - but this is surely the most riveting perofrmance of this act ever committed to film.True, Callas was in better voice when she filmed this same Act in Paris a few years previously (some of the top notes are little better than screams), but I have rarely, if ever, seen opera singers act with such naturalness and abandon. Both Callas and Gobbi are superb. You really forget they are singing and end up being totally drawn in to the performance of two actors. In fact I remember that on the days I worked at the English National Opera shop, whenever we played this video when the audience were gathering for that evening's performance, the tiny little shop would quickly fill up with people who couldn't take their eyes off the television screens. Enough said!
Amazon.co.uk Review
Benoit Jacquot's filmed Tosca treads a fine line between operatic staginess and cinematic contrivance. As per the libretto, each act takes place in a single setting, but with the singers here miming to a pre-recorded soundtrack. Jacquot freely reminds us of the conceit with cutaways to the recording session itself--revealing conductor, orchestra and soloists at work--thus a bridge is made between the on-screen action and the music-making itself, and the inherent duality of any opera production is laid refreshingly bare. The same cannot be said for the director's decision to interpolate spoken dialogue over the music in key places--a distraction not an enhancement.
Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna are glamorous and attractive enough to make the most of their Hollywood-style close-ups; their singing easily bears similar close scrutiny--as anyone who owns the CD soundtrack album will surely already know. If Alagna lacks a little power as Cavaradossi on record, his charismatic screen presence happily compensates; Gheorghiu is both vocally and physically almost ideal as Tosca. Ruggero Raimondi's Scarpia completes an outstanding trio, and in the pit (or, rather, in the studio) conductor Antonio Pappano handles the drama of Puccini's score without missing a single nuance. Both musically and visually, then, this is a Tosca to treasure.
On the DVD: Tosca on disc looks vibrant in this warm, widescreen picture accompanied by a DTS 5.1 soundtrack. Three filmed interviews--with Gheorghiu, Pappano and Jacquot--provide some insight into the making of this production. --Mark Walker
Customer Reviews:
A great musical performance but a disappointing staging.......2007-12-03
Unfortunately I must disagree with some of the other reviews who praise this film version of Tosca. Although there is no limit to my praise of the musical performance on this DVD I am seriously disappointed in the staging. Although, as Alagna says in an interview when asked how far a singer can also be an actor, Im not sure if we really are actors. We are would-be actors and we do our best to be credible, the acting is poor even for opera singers who after all do (theatre-)acting as part of there job. One would expect the loving couple Tosca and Cavaradossi, when played by a married couple in real life to do a better impression of infatuation and the desperate Cavaradossi on his way to the execution not only sound desperate but also look if, not look brooding. The only actor who stands out for his acting abilities is Ruggero Raimondi who does Scarpia very well indeed (maybe it is somewhat due to the company).
The scenery of Tosca is quite simple there is one scene for each act. No moving of scenery in mid-act. When you make a film of such a play one would expect the director Benoit Jacquot to either stay with the limitations of a theatre scene or really take advantage of the possibilities in movie making, but unfortunately he does neither which gives a budget-feeling to the whole film. It is also rather annoying that the director does not (when the singers acting is poor) have a thorough understanding of the music. There are many occasions when the singers dont know how to fill out the time until there next entry and would have needed some help with ideas.
But the two most annoying oddities is that the play is interrupted by pictures of the recording studio (the most annoying one being the studio clip right at the end of the opera and a sigh if relief from Gheorghiu that breaks the atmosphere that have taken them an entire act to build) and that there are places where the director has added spoken dialogs on top of the arias. To quote another amazon.co.uk reviewer If Puccini wanted the opera to be that way, he would have composed it like that! Furthermore, the timing is rather bad between sound and vision and one can tell that the singers do not actually sing but mime. The occasions when the singers (mostly Scarpia) doesnt sing but rather thinks his line (you can hear him sing but he doesnt move his mouth) is on the other hand exactly why a film can be even stronger than a live performance.
Having spitted out my disgust for the staging I have to return to the musical performance which is beyond any criticism. A radiating Angela Gheorghiu does a perfect Tosca. Roberto Alagna, with his distinctive sound is so heartbreaking in his third act aria The song of Life. Ruggiero Raimondi does a very vicious, vindictive and completely unsympathetic Scarpia. And the Orchestra under Antonio Pappano is just marvellous. One seldom notices the orchestra during an Opera performance unless they botch-up something but here one does because of the fine playing.
Overall, I would recommend anyone to buy the audio CD of this fine performance but dont bother with the DVD. It is too bad but this film just isnt worth the money.
Marred by a few eccentricities.......2006-04-28
Marvellous music. A very good cast, where Angela is the biggest star and probably the best Tosca I've listen to. The conducting by Pappano is wonderful. The sets are of very good taste and many of the images are very good (although not all in accordance with my taste). The scenes of the studio session in the middle of "movie" scenes are torelable, although I would prefer not to see them included (but this is again a matter of taste). Now, what I think is a shame and a lack of respect for the composer is the reciting on top of singing, which sadly happens a couple of times in the film. For example, in a scene, you can hear Mario sing but on top of that you see and hear him talk as well..If Puccini wanted the opera to be that way, he would have composed it like that! This is the main directing eccentricity, there are some others. This had everything to be a top film.
SUPERB.......2005-08-20
I have two versions of Tosca on video - both with Domingo, one with Ruggero Raimondi and the other with Sherrill Milnes as Scarpia. I also have the CD of the Maria Callas /Guiseppe di Stefano / Tito Gobbi recording. So, Tosca is one of my favorite operas. I saw this film version on DVD and decided to buy it. How glad I am that I did. The acting and singing are superb - Angela Gheorghiu, Roberto Alagan and Ruggero Raimondi are in very fine voice. The switches from the studio to the actual scenes are brilliant - especially at the end, when we see Angela's real emotion at the recording.
This is a 'must have' for any opera fanatic. The sound and vision are excellent to say the least. Don't miss out - it's a gem !!!!!
The Best Version on DVD.......2005-03-29
I must say that I think that this version of Tosca is the best available on DVD. Even though the singers mime to a pre-recorded soundtrack, the filming, singing and acting is 1st rate. I didn't find the flashbacks to the singers distracting at all, in fact, I found that it added a different dimension to the whole concept of an opera film. Excellent in all aspects, a real winner.
A rather shaky balance.......2004-02-22
This is a hard to love 'Tosca', but obviously its level of ambition is praiseworthy.
Benoit Jacquot does not seem to be too well-versed in the grammar of moviemaking. He manages a very shaky balance between the melodrama of the action, induced by the music, and the naturalism of the cinema verité-inspired recording sessions in everyday clothes. It is plain affectation when for instance the tenor whispers the rhymes as an impassioned line over the same monologue sung as an aria proper.
At its best, which is far too seldom if you ask me, this is a dynamic, even explosive 'Tosca', brilliantly sung and conducted by Antonio Pappano who really knows this music.
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