Since RTO is out of town...

I finally got around to watching the Met HD broadcast of Tosca. I read a few stories about this particular production and how patrons weren't particularly happy with it. For me, it was, um, meh. It had it's moments, but for the most part I found myself asking "Why?" through most of it. of course this could be a lot of my Karita Matilla bias coming through. They kept talking about what a great actress she is, and I just can't get past the fact that she looks like she's in pain when she hits the high notes. Overall, I think the director let most of the singers get too cartoony in their portrayal particularly Tosca and Scarpia. I had a hard time finding him menacing and a little too much on the perv side. And Tosca flailed around a bit much and she had this weird tiptoeing thing in the second act like "Oh, I'm swooning... but I need to be further over here to hit my mark" The very end kinda rocked except it was poorly timed. It was another "Why is she doing that?" moment until you see that "oh, she needed to kill some time before jumping" So, I found a clip of it here. The bit I'm talking about starts at about 5:50.



if you have time to kill, check out the comments at the pbs link, the ones that didn't like it are hilarious. My fave:

Martina Arroyo once said that where she comes from, you don’t stand around after you kill a guy…you run! I wish she’d directed Mattila’s Tosca, who did everything but brew coffee and text her girlfriends after killing Scarpia....