It appears Peter Gelb made quite the boo-boo, when he hired Luc Bondy to direct a new production of Tosca at the Met. The new production opened the opera season tonight, and not since Mary Zimmerman's reviled La Sonnambula last season, has so much booing been heard in response to the creative team's curtain call. There were a couple of boos after the first act, a few more after the second, and by the time the curtain came down on act three, presumably in response to the pathetic staging of Tosca's jump that served as the icing on the mud pie, well it was pretty much unanimous throughout the audience.
And it's really too bad, because there was some fabulous singing in the production from Karita Mattila's Tosca and Marcelo Alvarez's Cavaradossi. And of course James Levine's Met orchestra was divine. I will say last minute replacement George Gagnidze's Scarpia was totally underwhelming, well acted perhaps, but very often drowned out by the orchestra. A beautiful voice can make one forget lousy acting (see: Marcelo Alvarez), but if we can't hear you, well most people aren't fans of mimes.
I don't consider myself one of those crazy traditionalists who thinks Zeffirelli's original production was the greatest thing since sliced bread - or since his Aida, anyway. Even though the sets throughout were absolutely hideous, there were a few well staged moments in this production that were downright disturbing that I never really felt while watching the old Met production. The character of Scarpia especially, I was never so creeped out by before. I think in the old Zef production, everyone was so busy looking at the pretty sets and listening to the beautiful music, the audience missed out a bit on just how disturbing the story really is, and how real these characters can be, when directed and staged properly. This production was such a mess that the thrilling moments were few and far between, but I did leave the first and second acts (the third was just a total travesty), but now more than ever I find myself really craving a really well thought out, probably somewhat barer staging of Tosca. And I still drool at the thought of the Bregenz production described in Variety.
I mean, I know the most important thing in an opera is the music, and this Tosca has that down pat. But when a director botches Tosca's final jump by having her run up stairs, taunt the guards to catch her and then push them down the stairs, then run behind a wall, AND THEN have a dummy just tilt on a ledge but not actually fall off because what was underneath was either supposed to be an abyss or a body of water - no one in the audience could quite figure that one out - but it was definitely was not a pit one could fall through - well, you got trouble. Perhaps the audience was expected to believe that Tosca didn't actually jump, and this was merely a set up for next season's world premiere, "Tosca 2: Tosca's Revenge." Except I have a suspicion that Tosca's Revenge may actually amount to a return to life for the old Zeffirelli production which presumably is sitting in mothballs somewhere in New Jersey, waiting for an outcome just like this to rear its opulent head once again. We can only pray.
