Tenor Vittorio Grigolo has helped transform The Metropolitan Opera’s initially troubled “Tosca” into a rousing success. Photograph courtesy vittoriogrigolo.com.
The Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Giacomo Puccini’s “Tosca” – an opera about sexual harassment – was rocked by that now seemingly ubiquitous phenomenon. Already reeling from the loss of the original stars and conductor, the production took a giant step back when the second conductor, former music director James Levine, was hit with sexual abuse allegations and suspended a little less than a month before the New Year’s Eve premiere. Ten days after Levine’s suspension, Bryn Terfel, scheduled to play the villain, withdrew, citing vocal fatigue.
Sometimes, however, you get not what you want but what was meant – or who was meant. That The Met pulled off this ‘Tosca’ is a relief. That it’s as wonderful as it is, is nothing short of a miracle.
The production by David McVicar, with set and costume design by John Macfarlane, is something of a redemption for The Met and its general manager, Peter Gelb.
In 2009, The Met presented a now-infamous new “Tosca” from Luc Bondy that stripped the opera of its religious resonance, which is key to its devout title character; added some blasphemous sexual overtones and reduced its grand setting – Rome’s Church of Sant’ Andrea della Valle, Farnese Palace and Castel Sant’Angelo in the Napoleonic era – to what looked like a Holiday Inn. The boos that rained down on this travesty were such that they made the evening news.
Contrast this with the standing ovation that greeted Saturday’s performance of the new “Tosca,” which was simulcast around the world in HD. With it, McVicar – who redeems himself, too, after his murky “Norma,” also for The Met – restores “the grander that was Rome” in the tradition of The Met’s former Franco Zeffirelli production. Better still, soprano Sonya Yoncheva as the jealous but loving diva Floria Tosca, tenor Vittorio Grigolo as her equally impassioned artist-lover Mario Cavaradossi and baritone Željko Lučić as their sadistic nemesis, police chief Baron Scarpia, convey the raw passions of their roles both in their superb singing and intense acting.
Whether by design or happenstance, the staging also underscores Tosca’s all too familiar predicament. To save her rebel lover from execution, she must submit to Scarpia’s lust. He in turn is looking for a twofer – to kill Cavaradossi, a political and romantic rival, and to possess Tosca, preferably as cruelly as possible. It’s, of course, a no-win situation. Although Tosca kills Scarpia, rather than surrender to his debasement, he’s already double-crossed her by ordering Cavaradossi’s “mock” execution to be played for real. When she realizes this, the climbing theme that has served as a haunting motif throughout the opera takes Tosca and the audience all the way up to the top of the Castel Sant’Angelo and the fate that awaits all flesh.
But not before Tosca delivers one final salvo to her dead tormentor: “Oh, Scarpia, we meet before God.”
Yeah, sexual harassers. Think on that.