This week on Rhode Island Public television,
WSBE: (Comcast 294, Cox 808, Full Channel 109, and Verizon 478)
Great Performances at the Met
|
Saturday, April 1 -- 8:00pm; Sunday, April 2 -- 3:00am; Monday, April 3 -- 12:00am
SATYAGRAHA
The Met's visually extravagant production is captured in its
encore engagement. Richard Croft once again portrays Gandhi in Philip Glass'
unforgettable opera, which the Washington Post calls "a profound and
beautiful work of theater."
DURATION: 180 minutes
DETAILS: [CC] [STEREO]
GENRE: PARENTS PICKS
OPERA ON WGBH TV
THIS WEEK!
TOSCA
Great Performances at the Met
|
Sunday, April 2 -- 3:00am; Monday, April 3 -- 3:00am, on WGBH2
Tosca
Great Performances at the Met opens its fourth season with a
new production of Puccini’s Tosca, staged by Luc Bondy in his Metropolitan
Opera debut, and starring Karita Mattila in her first Met performance of the
title role. The cast includes Joseph Colaneri, Marcelo Álvarez, George Gagnidze
and Paul Plishka. Boston Symphony Orchestra Music DirectorJames Levine
conducts. Sets are by Richard Peduzzi, with costumes by Milena Canonero and
lighting by Max Keller.
DURATION: 120 MINUTES
DETAILS: [CC] [STEREO]
GENRE: PARENTS PICKS
This column doesn't mention my favorite Tosca mishap, when a New York City Opera crew vexed by an American diva's diva-ish behavior replaced the mattress with a trampoline, so when she jumped to her death, she bounced back into the view of the audience. That one still gives me the giggles when I think of it!
The Jinx-iness of Tosca: Opera's Favorite Mishaps-Magnet
by M Smorg, Yahoo Contributor Network
Opera is an art-form put on by dramatic people for the
drama-loving audience. With so much drama on all of its fronts, the opera
theater is a fertile ground for urban legends and popular myths and
superstitions. Aside from that (in)famous Scottish Opera based on its equally
jinx-a-delic Scottish Play (we never utter the word "Macbeth" inside
the auditorium, be it at the opera or at the playhouse. Doing so would require
the cleansing ritual of three full body spins, an enthusiastic bout of cursing,
a projectile spit and an exceedingly melodramatic round of begging in order to
be allowed back inside the theater), one of the most accident/mishap-prone
opera in standard repertoire today is Puccini's audiences' favorite, Tosca.
The story is based on Victorien Sardou's 1887 play, La
Tosca, where the famous opera singer Floria Tosca tries in vain to keep her
political insurgent artist lover, Mario Cavaradossi, from being executed at the
hand of the power-hungry Baron Scarpia. Her pleas for Cavaradossi's release countered
by the Baron's demand for the pleasure of her fleshy companionship, Tosca
contrives to trick Scarpia into helping her fake her lover's death. She
obtained from him a release document before knifing him in a brief struggle
only to find herself double-crossed when Cavaradossi was actually shot with
real bullet in the supposed mocked execution. With all her escape routes barred
when Scarpia's body is discovered, Tosca runs up to the roof of the majestic
Castel Sant'Angleo and jumps off it, escaping from life straight into operatic
immortality.
The traditional staging requirements for live candles (in
Scarpia's Act II dark-ish study), physical struggle, stabbing, and shooting
make Tosca a fertile ground for onstage accidents and mishaps of various
degrees of severity. Much of the legends are unconfirmable now. There is a
persistent legend of the bouncing Tosca, for one, where a particularly weighty
Tosca jumps off the stage parapet and lands on a trampoline instead of a
mattress, and finds herself bouncing back in view of the audience anywhere
ranging from 3 or 4 times to 15 times, depending on who is telling the story.
The identification of the unfortunate bobbling diva also seems to change with
the teller of the story. Some say it was diva X and the other diva Y. Whoever
the actual diva may be, she is most likely very pleased that she cannot not now
be firmly associated with this legend.
There are also tales in which the newly recruited
supernumeraries playing Scarpia's soldiers are so unfamiliar with the opera's
plot that they end up shooting Tosca instead of Cavaradossi. And there is yet
another tale in which the inexperienced extra soldiers, being thrown onto the
stage with only the direction to "follow Tosca", all jump off the
castle's parapet with her, ending the opera in a mass suicide instead of just
one climatic one.
For the Tosca mishaps that definitely happened in real life,
though, here are a few confirmed episodes:
In the 1920s, one of the reigning Toscas at Metropolitan
Opera in New York was the fiery Moravian soprano Maria Jeritza. She was such a
committed singing actress that when she continued singing after having fallen
to the floor during her scuffle with Scarpia, originating a tradition of Tosca
singing her famous aria while lying on the floor. On one such physical
performance of Tosca, however, it was the Scarpia of Antonio Scotti who found
himself painfully deviated from the script when the prop dagger Jeritza stabbed
him with failed to retract upon contact.
A certain amount of realism is demanded by the opera
audience. So when the guns used in the execution scene in a Tosca performance
at the Macerata Festival in the 1960s weren't charged with enough gunpowder and
failed to bang properly, the local newspaper took revenge by headlining its
review with "Cavaradossi dies of a heart attack!" So much for
audience sophistication!
Nineteen sixty five was a particularly ill-lucked year for
the well hexed opera. As Maria Callas tried to wrestle off Tito Gobbi's Scarpia
her long black wig caught fire from one of the candelabras, much to the horror
of the audience. Luckily the quick-thinking Gobbi improvised a fight move on
the spot and snuffled out the flame without missing a beat and Callas escaped
without injury. A few months later in Rome tenor Gianni Raimondi wasn't quite
as lucky as his Cavaradossi was fired upon by an overcharged prop gun during
the execution scene and suffered burn to his face.
Live fire on the stage was something that Russian soprano
Galina Vishnevskaya was not used to when she started performing in the West in
the 1970s. During a Tosca run at the Vienna State Opera Vishnevskaya's
insistence on using her own wig instead of the fire-retarded one furnished by
the theater backfired when her tress was ignited by one of the candle. The diva
kept on singing, evidently not realizing what had happened, and was shocked
when the freshly murdered Scarpia jumped back into life and lunged at her along
with the Cavaradossi (none other than one Placido Domingo), who wasn't even
supposed to be in the scene to begin with. The two colleagues successfully put
the fire out as the curtain fell and Vishnevskaya suffered only minor burns to
her scalp.
On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean Eva Marton was a big
star at the Metropolitan Opera in the mid 80's when in 1986 her Tosca took a
vicious elbow blow to the jaws in her scuffle with off Juan Pons' powerfully
verismo Scarpia. Marton soldiered on and finished the show singing with
dislocated jaws, earning much praise from the audiences and critics alike. Her
Toscan plight was not finished, however, and she suffered another mishap on her
final performance of the role at the Met in 1999 when the stage hands replaced
the usual mattress she was to land on with an even softer one that was stuffed
with feathers. The thing exploded on impact and covered Tosca with unbecomingly
birdy tuffs, sticking to various parts of her costume and make up as she
grudgingly made her way back onto the stage for her curtain calls.
At the Minnesota Opera in St. Paul in 1993 soprano Elisabeth
Knighton Printy had a real fright she realized upon jumping off the stage
platform that she wasn't in the right spot where the mattress was placed on the
ground to cushion her fall. Thirty feet straight down later the star of the show
had knocked herself out of action for the rest of the run with two broken legs
and many bruises.
A couple of years later the stars were aligned malevolently
for tenor Fabio Armiliato as he commenced his performance as Cavaradossi at the
Macerata Festival in 1995. One of the guns used in the execution scene was
loaded with a bullet that wasn't quite blank enough and the tenor was hit in
the leg with its fragments. Determined to not let the incident faze him,
Armiliato turned up to perform in the subsequent performance with the aid of
crutches, which promptly broke under him along with his other leg, effectively
knocking him out of the rest of the performances.
Sources:
- Anne Edwards. Maria Callas: An Intimate Biography. St.
Martin's Press. New York. 2001.
- Andrew Gumbel. Tosca - Out With A Bang. Independent of
London. 6 August 1995.
- Time Magazine. Music: Stage Dagger. 8 February 1937.
- Johanna Fiedler. Molto Agitato: The Mayhem Behind the
Muisc at the Metropolitan Opera. Anchor Books 2003.
Published by M Smorg,
Generation X er lover of opera and classical music. Casual
pianist & clarinetist working in laboratory medicine. Reachable at
sdcmorg@yahoo.com (please put AC on subject line).
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A plea from the Yankee Diva, Joyce DiDonato
Save the San Diego Opera!
BRAVI, TUTTI!!! We SMASHED through the deadline (April 13)
and signed MORE than 10K names! Please, keep spreading the word and signing ~ I
don't think we can underestimate the power of an avalanche of support on this
one. Again, this is a tipping point ... let's tip it in a wonderful way!
SAN DIEGO OPERA MAKES
MUSIC WORTH SAVING!
We are shocked and
dismayed by the sudden decision of the San Diego Opera Board of Directors to
shut the company's doors. The board believes that a decline in recent
attendance indicates that the people of San Diego no longer want world class
opera in their hometown. The decision was made without any public quorum and
without looking into other solutions to keep San Diego Opera alive, even as the
company has no debt! This decision will result in the following:
1. Loss of hundreds
of good middle class jobs and careers in the entertainment industry.
2. Closure of San Diego's
third largest cultural institution and tenth largest opera company in America.
3. Decline in musical
exposure for San Diego schools, students, and residents at large.
4. Decrease in
revenue for surrounding small businesses, hotels, and restaurants.
DON'T FOLD, REVOTE!
We have until April
13, 2014 to convince the board to reverse the decision and keep San Diego Opera
alive, but we need your help! Let's prove to the board that the people of San
Diego:
1. Believe San Diego
Opera makes music worth saving.
2. Have interest in
attending an opera in the 2015 season.
3. Regard San Diego
Opera as an important San Diego cultural institution.
4. Want an opera
company more representative of the community, even if it means changes in
leadership and direction.
Sign this petition
and help us convince the San Diego Opera Board of Directors to keep opera alive!.
PLEASE SIGN and SPREAD THE WORD!!!!
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BOOING TO END AT LA SCALA?
When hell freezes over!
When hell freezes over!
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This is a fascinating analysis of the financial problems at the Met
The Met: what’s
really wrong? « Parterre
Box
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OPERA ON THE INTERNET
WITH
DAVE D' AGUANNO
Several internet radio stations this Saturday (March
29) will be carrying the LIVE broadcast from the Met of Bellini's "La
Sonnambula." Diana Damrau can be heard as the sleepwalking soprano in this
one, having appeared last season as Gilda in the Met's HD-transmission of
Verdi's "Rigoletto."
Another opera from the bel canto era -- Donizetti's
"Lucia di Lammermoor" -- comes to us in a recent performance from
Amsterdam, via Radio 4 (the Netherlands).
Fans of the operas of Richard Strauss, rejoice! Three of his
operas appear on Saturday's schedule, with one of his most popular --
"Der Rosenkavalier" -- to be heard on French Radio in a performance
from Paris that took place earlier this month (March 18). Mezzo-soprano Sophie
Koch sings the role of Octavian, a mere 3 days after performing the role of
Charlotte in the Met's HD-transmission of Massenet's "Werther" on the
15th.
Soprano Emily Magee, who recently sang the role of the
Foreign Princess in the Met's HD-transmission of Dvorak's "Rusalka",
takes on the role of the Empress in Richard Strauss's opera "Die Frau ohne
Schatten" which comes to us LIVE on BBC Radio 4. It's a Royal Opera House
(London) performance.
The 3rd Richard Strauss opera for this Saturday happens
to be one of his least performed: "Guntram" (his 1st opera). German
Radio will be broadcasting the February 23, 2014 performance of the work which
took place in Dresden.
Enjoy!
DAVE
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The Met
Saturday afternoon radio broadcast
Bellini's
LA SONNAMBULA
March 29, 2014 1:00 pm ET
Armiliato; Damrau, Camarena, Pertusi
Synopsis:
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