David Patrick Stearns

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KEN HOWARD / Metropolitan Opera

George Gagnidze played the police chief, Scarpia, as sex-driven and shamelessly bad, in an ugly costume to boot.

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Posted on Thu, Sep. 24, 2009

Boos for the Met's new 'Tosca' weren't off-base

By David Patrick Stearns

Inquirer Classical Music Critic

NEW YORK - Just because the world is devolving toward the fashionably gothic, does the Metropolitan Opera have license to reflect that with its seedy new Tosca?

That question encompassed more than one might have thought at Monday's season-opening performance, when the audience's booing wasn't the most damning reaction to a new (and not particularly revisionist) production of Puccini's thriller. More eerily disturbing was the listlessness of the applause, reflecting a disgruntlement that seemed to cast a shadow over what was indisputable good - tenor Marcelo Alvarez, a splendidly nuanced Puccini tenor and the only cast member not uglified by this instantly loathed production.

New Met productions are often booed these days. And naysayers vote early and often - so much that by the time the high-def movie theater simulcast rolls around (Tosca's is Oct. 10), regional audiences ask, "What was the problem?"

In this case, I predict less guessing.

The insurance promised by the casting of beautiful, stage-savvy Karita Mattila in the title role only went so far; separation anxiety from the previous, ultra-ornate Franco Zeffirelli production was definitely at work. Though it was widely criticized for cinematically detailed sets that dwarfed all who sang before them, Zeffirelli's take kept the audience a safe emotional distance from the opera's sordid souls: singer Floria Tosca, caught between her freedom-fighting lover Mario and the insurrection-crushing police chief Scarpia. Zeffirelli offered so much postcard value in his production, you'd gladly take a two-week vacation in there.

The more confrontational realism of European stage directors - and Luc Bondy, mastermind of this Tosca, is one of the best - is OK for Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtensk, but not for the Met's core repertoire. And Bondy's world is downright Orwellian: When Mario is hauled off to be tortured, it's through a doorway that emits cold fluorescent light suggesting the dreaded Room 101 of 1984.

Beyond that, the Act II set of Scarpia's headquarters hardly suggested the usual sumptuous decadence of a heartless aristocrat. Instead, Bondy's Scarpia is a lower-class police chief in a gracelessly functional office with large maps and lots of prostitutes to illustrate sexual appetites that are clearly spelled out in the libretto. So driven is he by sex that he's reduced to begging Tosca for her favors, though he holds all the cards for saving her lover from execution.

So Bondy's ideas were never irrelevant, but the work of a hyper-alert theatrical intelligence delivering an earnest new reading of a work that hasn't lent itself much to reinterpretation. The opening-night eruption is evidence of a growing schism in Met audiences between those who side with theatrical relevance and those who believe the music covers that base just fine - which is why Mary Zimmerman's even-more-loudly-booed La sonnambula either saved or destroyed the opera last season, depending on whom you talked to.

This time, though, Met booers - with whom I rarely side - had a point: The Richard Peduzzi sets were plain and lacked a point of view. Act III looked like a provisional skeleton set. Poor Mattila, awkwardly costumed (by Milena Canonero) as an Anna Magnani look-alike, has never looked worse. Though Scarpia's magnetism comes from his shameless badness - and this Scarpia is bad - George Gagnidze was costumed like a bum. New York's Broadway and opera audiences automatically reject ugly shows. It's the law. Did nobody warn Bondy & Co.?

There was lots of fresh music-making: James Levine led the ever-fabulous Met orchestra in a vigorous, coloristically vivid Tosca bubbling with seldom-heard details. Minor roles had luxury casting, like Paul Plishka as Sacristan and David Pittsinger as Angelotti.

Alvarez, even in his Act III aria, resisted the crowd-pleasing temptation to bawl. His emotionalism was heated but precise. Gagnidze wasn't a sonorous Scarpia, but was a theatrically effective one. In the famous Act II aria "Vissi d'arte," Mattila dared to shriek the ending of her penultimate phrase to underscore her religious despair. It was gutsy, original, and chilling.

Yet she was also the primary musical hole: She has a great voice for Germanic repertoire, and excellently articulated the non-aria parts of her role. But her upper range feels so thin (is she veering toward mezzo-dom?) that high notes don't come close to blooming. That's not good Puccini. Arias that should be the heart of her role were the least satisfying.

Mattila has built up so much goodwill over the years, I don't see her being booed for this. But the general wrongness of this Tosca had a contributing factor in its star.