Everyone's favorite doomed revolutionary artist. I say we have a jolly good chat about the one and only Mario Cavardossi, and how he's the most tragic son on a gun in opera.
Good times! One of the things I like about Tosca is the opportunity for such a wide range of interpretations of both Tosca and Cavaradossi, in the attempts to make them consistent and compelling characters. I myself am partial to the "passionate about art, passionate about justice, and passionately in love" Cavaradossi who is a terribly tragic figure, but I like seeing singers give different weight to his various traits and preoccupations. I suppose you know about Carreras' and Domingo's very different takes on the character?
@Lucy: I know that Domingo plays Cavaradossi as knowing he's going to be executed, but I don't know much else besides. Tosca is one of those operas that I'm really learning about, which both fascinates and terrifies me, largely because it's kind of hard to see it all go to hell the way it does, and with such beautiful music.
Either hijacking your posts or giving incomplete info... sorry! I was browsing in the Strand once when I found a book of interviews with Great Singers ca. 1980; discussions of their most famous roles were included. Carreras said he saw Cavaradossi as being an accidental revolutionary, and a bit of a one-dimensional character, defined primarily by his relationship to the diva, a necessary accessory on a dramaturgical level (and of course, very much in love.) N.B. Although this doesn't fit "my" Cavaradossi, the Carreras/Caballe recording is fascinating in terms of vocal-dramatic interpretation.
Domingo, on the other hand, says that he sees Mario as an engaged idealist who has a bit of a premonition about the strangeness of the day... who can be absentminded with Tosca, because of his political preoccupations, but loves her nonetheless.
I like seeing artists play around with the variables in the relationship: how old are Mario and Floria? how long have they been together? how secure are they with each other (and if they aren't, why not?) I guess Tosca and Scarpia could get their own posts, as well! Cavaradossi has, I think, the potential to be Puccini's Most Marriageable Tenor: intelligent and grounded as well as passionate. I've seen him played as Rash Artist/Rebel... and I think seeing more stagings would help me appreciate the potentials of a range of interpretations. Alvarez made a sweet, boyish-impetuous Cavaradossi both times I saw him, Licitra similarly, with a little more focus on the politics. Kaufmann treated the romance and political activism with equally convincing commitment.
My mother actually refuses to see Tosca because of how upsetting she finds it, but I'm an addict. I recommend getting your hands on the '53 recording with Callas/Gobbi/Di Stefano if you haven't yet!
oh, oh, oh! what can I say! every nano-second in that aria from JK is so intensely imagined. Delicate when required (his diminuendi are I think similar to Di Stefano's?), and powerful at the end. But the passion of an almost broken man who has had to plead with the guard to be able to write the letter.
The staging and lighting (and casting) in this scene are brilliant - all the focus on jK's wonderful face and the equally strong profile of the guard - when they are in opposition to each other (Cavaradossi looking up and the guard looking down) - it's a starkly beautiful painting, and enhances the intensity, where ROH is just fussy.
The pathos of JK's interpretation is I think greater because of his energetic bravado and defiance of Scarpia before he is tortured - the ROH production seems to emphasise how much the henchmen hate him because he kept laughing at them..... - now they have all but broken him. From his carefree joy in life in 'Recondita harmonia' - to the depths of suffering.
YOur idea about Amnesty International is brilliant Christie! - my latest AI magazine has an interivew with Esa-Pekka Salonen - they are doing a performance of Il Prigioniera in London for AI's 50th anniversary. The world is full of Scarpia's, and Cavaradossi's..........still.
Jonathan Miller did a production of Tosca in 1985 set in 1930's Fascist Italy - Scarpia's room was full of filing cabinets which his thugs would open from time to time - brought the banality of cruelty almost into the present........
All that aside - JK is utterly thrilling in your clip!
Ok, I'm sorry, but I just found this in an article on Tosca by Deborah Burton, and had to share:
"Even Puccini himself succumbed to the opera's sex appeal and kept for himself a pornographic version of a line of text in a sketch for Tosca's phrase, "Oh, come la sai bene / l'arte di farti amare!" (Oh, how well you know the art of making yourself loved!): one expletive-deleted rendering of his private lyric might read, "Oh, how well you know the art of getting in my pants!" "
My Italian isn't good enough to guess at the original, so my only commentary is...!!!
@Lucy: Fabulous artist, loyal revolutionary, AND good in bed? Lucky Tosca! :P I can completely empathize with your mother on not wanting to see Tosca. I've stayed away from it this long because I couldn't bear the idea of seeing such tragedy onstage. Whatever you do, DON'T take her to see it if Kaufmann is in it: somehow I doubt she'd make it through without breaking down completely.
@shapta-dakini: That was the first Tosca video I ever saw, and I was utterly destroyed. I don't know what it is about this particular staging that just renders the whole thing even more devestating than normal. I hear the Bondy sets were widely panned, but in Act 3 at least, they worked to grim effect.
This set works so well I think because the starkness and lack of clutter doesn't fix Mario in a particular time or place or culture - he is all prisoners, anywhere, anywhen. He is even given a pencil to write with, not a quill pen...... And, of course, JK is perfect in it - how can the man be the definitive Cavaradossi, definitive Don Jose, the Lohengrin and Siegmund of dreams, Don Carlo, Alfredo, Werther, etc etc. He's a phenomenon. Many (pointless?) books will be written.......You're lucky that you had JK when you were a Cavaradossi virgin...
Forgive the long mouthy postings - years ago I got paid for a while for doing admin and PR in opera and theatre - which is heaven and then hell if you find your soul aches to be a diva too.....Now it's great to have time to be a village diva, with time to actually talk about productions with like-minded fanatics......, (and time to monopolise someone else's blog - maybe I should practise Tweet-style postings........impossible!)
Heck, I barely made it through without breaking down completely. "Easing in" to your first live Tosca with some other tenor might help. :) We'll see how the "no torture" vs. "all the Jonas Kaufmann" works out in my mom's opera going plans... she has now, to my shocked delight, checked out books about Faust in advance of our trip!
@shapta-dakini Interesting assessment! Maybe Bondy's production had more breathing space (or had just been fine-tuned more after its NYC runs) in Munich, but I have to say I remain unimpressed with it as a whole. Not worth panning, but not much to get excited about, imho. STILL, I do agree that the stark, sharp sets work best in Act III. When Catherine Malfitano directed her first Tosca after ??? times of starring in it, she said something along the lines of: "This should feel like the end of the world, the edge of the universe, because Mario has come to the end of his life, to the edge of the void, and this is all he has, except his memories." Pass the hankies!
8 comments:
Good times! One of the things I like about Tosca is the opportunity for such a wide range of interpretations of both Tosca and Cavaradossi, in the attempts to make them consistent and compelling characters. I myself am partial to the "passionate about art, passionate about justice, and passionately in love" Cavaradossi who is a terribly tragic figure, but I like seeing singers give different weight to his various traits and preoccupations. I suppose you know about Carreras' and Domingo's very different takes on the character?
@Lucy: I know that Domingo plays Cavaradossi as knowing he's going to be executed, but I don't know much else besides. Tosca is one of those operas that I'm really learning about, which both fascinates and terrifies me, largely because it's kind of hard to see it all go to hell the way it does, and with such beautiful music.
Either hijacking your posts or giving incomplete info... sorry! I was browsing in the Strand once when I found a book of interviews with Great Singers ca. 1980; discussions of their most famous roles were included. Carreras said he saw Cavaradossi as being an accidental revolutionary, and a bit of a one-dimensional character, defined primarily by his relationship to the diva, a necessary accessory on a dramaturgical level (and of course, very much in love.) N.B. Although this doesn't fit "my" Cavaradossi, the Carreras/Caballe recording is fascinating in terms of vocal-dramatic interpretation.
Domingo, on the other hand, says that he sees Mario as an engaged idealist who has a bit of a premonition about the strangeness of the day... who can be absentminded with Tosca, because of his political preoccupations, but loves her nonetheless.
I like seeing artists play around with the variables in the relationship: how old are Mario and Floria? how long have they been together? how secure are they with each other (and if they aren't, why not?) I guess Tosca and Scarpia could get their own posts, as well! Cavaradossi has, I think, the potential to be Puccini's Most Marriageable Tenor: intelligent and grounded as well as passionate. I've seen him played as Rash Artist/Rebel... and I think seeing more stagings would help me appreciate the potentials of a range of interpretations. Alvarez made a sweet, boyish-impetuous Cavaradossi both times I saw him, Licitra similarly, with a little more focus on the politics. Kaufmann treated the romance and political activism with equally convincing commitment.
My mother actually refuses to see Tosca because of how upsetting she finds it, but I'm an addict. I recommend getting your hands on the '53 recording with Callas/Gobbi/Di Stefano if you haven't yet!
oh, oh, oh! what can I say! every nano-second in that aria from JK is so intensely imagined. Delicate when required (his diminuendi are I think similar to Di Stefano's?), and powerful at the end. But the passion of an almost broken man who has had to plead with the guard to be able to write the letter.
The staging and lighting (and casting) in this scene are brilliant - all the focus on jK's wonderful face and the equally strong profile of the guard - when they are in opposition to each other (Cavaradossi looking up and the guard looking down) - it's a starkly beautiful painting, and enhances the intensity, where ROH is just fussy.
The pathos of JK's interpretation is I think greater because of his energetic bravado and defiance of Scarpia before he is tortured - the ROH production seems to emphasise how much the henchmen hate him because he kept laughing at them..... - now they have all but broken him. From his carefree joy in life in 'Recondita harmonia' - to the depths of suffering.
YOur idea about Amnesty International is brilliant Christie! - my latest AI magazine has an interivew with Esa-Pekka Salonen - they are doing a performance of Il Prigioniera in London for AI's 50th anniversary. The world is full of Scarpia's, and Cavaradossi's..........still.
Jonathan Miller did a production of Tosca in 1985 set in 1930's Fascist Italy - Scarpia's room was full of filing cabinets which his thugs would open from time to time - brought the banality of cruelty almost into the present........
All that aside - JK is utterly thrilling in your clip!
Ok, I'm sorry, but I just found this in an article on Tosca by Deborah Burton, and had to share:
"Even Puccini himself succumbed to the opera's sex appeal and kept for himself a pornographic version of a line of text in a sketch for Tosca's phrase, "Oh, come la sai bene / l'arte di farti amare!" (Oh, how well you know the art of making yourself loved!): one expletive-deleted rendering of his private lyric might read, "Oh, how well you know the art of getting in my pants!" "
My Italian isn't good enough to guess at the original, so my only commentary is...!!!
@Lucy: Fabulous artist, loyal revolutionary, AND good in bed? Lucky Tosca! :P
I can completely empathize with your mother on not wanting to see Tosca. I've stayed away from it this long because I couldn't bear the idea of seeing such tragedy onstage. Whatever you do, DON'T take her to see it if Kaufmann is in it: somehow I doubt she'd make it through without breaking down completely.
@shapta-dakini: That was the first Tosca video I ever saw, and I was utterly destroyed. I don't know what it is about this particular staging that just renders the whole thing even more devestating than normal. I hear the Bondy sets were widely panned, but in Act 3 at least, they worked to grim effect.
This set works so well I think because the starkness and lack of clutter doesn't fix Mario in a particular time or place or culture - he is all prisoners, anywhere, anywhen. He is even given a pencil to write with, not a quill pen......
And, of course, JK is perfect in it - how can the man be the definitive Cavaradossi, definitive Don Jose, the Lohengrin and Siegmund of dreams, Don Carlo, Alfredo, Werther, etc etc. He's a phenomenon. Many (pointless?) books will be written.......You're lucky that you had JK when you were a Cavaradossi virgin...
Forgive the long mouthy postings - years ago I got paid for a while for doing admin and PR in opera and theatre - which is heaven and then hell if you find your soul aches to be a diva too.....Now it's great to have time to be a village diva, with time to actually talk about productions with like-minded fanatics......, (and time to monopolise someone else's blog - maybe I should practise Tweet-style postings........impossible!)
Heck, I barely made it through without breaking down completely. "Easing in" to your first live Tosca with some other tenor might help. :) We'll see how the "no torture" vs. "all the Jonas Kaufmann" works out in my mom's opera going plans... she has now, to my shocked delight, checked out books about Faust in advance of our trip!
@shapta-dakini Interesting assessment! Maybe Bondy's production had more breathing space (or had just been fine-tuned more after its NYC runs) in Munich, but I have to say I remain unimpressed with it as a whole. Not worth panning, but not much to get excited about, imho. STILL, I do agree that the stark, sharp sets work best in Act III. When Catherine Malfitano directed her first Tosca after ??? times of starring in it, she said something along the lines of: "This should feel like the end of the world, the edge of the universe, because Mario has come to the end of his life, to the edge of the void, and this is all he has, except his memories." Pass the hankies!
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