Tosca [DVD] [Import]

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Description

The fiery, passionate grandeur of Puccini's Tosca came to life with the Metropolitan Opera's new production of March 1985. Franco Zeffirelli, who both directed and designed the sets for the production, left his audience positively agasp. Conducted by Guiseppe Sinopoli. Appearances made by: James Courtney, Italo Tajo, Placido Domingo, Hildegard Behrens, Cornell MacNeil, Anthony Laciura, Russell Christopher, Melissa Fogarty, and Richard Vernon. Subtitled in English and filmed on March 20 and 27, 1985.

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This is the best of Placido Domingo's several video performances as the painter Cavaradossi, lover of the prima donna Floria Tosca and enthusiast of revolutionary ideals in the repressive atmosphere of Napoleonic-era Rome. His colleagues, Cornell MacNeil and Hildegard Behrens, are both seasoned and highly capable performers who make the deadly confrontation between Tosca and the corrupt police chief Scarpia intense and believable. Guiseppe Sinopoli conducts with style and dramatic power. But in many ways the primary reason for wanting Tosca in a video rather than an audio recording is the staging by Franco Zeffirelli--effective for the few thousand who saw it in the opera house but even more effective on camera for the much larger television and home video audience. He shifts easily from the small-scale duets in Act I to the grandiose spectacle of the "Te Deum" just before the curtain. His attention to small details helps build the tension in Act II to its violent climax, and in Act III he gives poignancy to the abrupt shift from hope to despair. The essence of Tosca is melodrama, and the singers, conductor, director, and audience all revel in it. --Joe McLellan