Tosca from the Met at Bolden Cineworld

The Metropolitan Opera relay as I have reported on all my visits provides an all round better experience than elsewhere because oft the ability to watch scenery being dismantled and moved around as well as the excellent live interviews with performers and technicians. On this occasion there was a bonus watching the former great conductor James Levine who had been with the Met for decades in rehearsal for Falstaff after his absence for over two years. He had retired after 50 years as a professional musician because of intense back pain. He was operated successfully to stop the pain but fortunately eh then ha d a much more damaging fall which rendered him into a wheelchair with almost no lower limb control however we physic therapy, hard work and a lot of support from family, friends and members of the public he is able to conduct again and watching the rehearsal we witnessed his intense professionalism and control. I had not planned to watch Falstaff because a comic opera is not my cup of tea despite is great ensemble singing. However I may go because just out of appreciate for his courage and determination and which I am sure will proving a great emotional experience for the audience as well as for him.

I have experienced a performance of Tosca from the Met before viewed on TV via their on line subscription player and was therefore aware of the story and that the opera contains a great Aria two by the male lead and one by Tosca in each of the three acts.

Tosca is played by Patricia Racette a mature substantial figure who although miss cast as the young innocent Madam Butterfly in Puccini’s Opera (which was one of my first experience of the Met relay back in 2009) has the emotional power and intensity in her singing which moved me to tears. As Tosca she had to give a sustained emotional force throughout, first a jealous woman threatened by what appears to be her lover’s attraction to another woman he had seen enter the church where he is suppose to be painting a Madonna and then fuelled by the evil commander of the French forces occupying Rome, who gives the impression that the woman has gone off with the lover to his secretary cottage in the grounds of the church.

There are strong chords between Tosca and the les Vepres Siciliennes, in that opera concerns an occupying power and a resistance movement in this instance led by Angelotti who we see escaping from prison, the Castel, del Angelo in Rome and which I have visited. He is hidden first in the church where he makes use of the meal left for the painter by the Sacriston. It emerges that woman who has come to pray had no interest in the painter but had come to leave clothing in the chapel, a dress and a fan so he could leave the city dressed as a woman with the fan hiding his features.

Unfortunately the alarm is sounded before the escape plan can be effected so the artist painter takes Angelloti to his cottage, mentioning that there is a well with half way down a passage to small cave. In the rush he leaves the fan which belonged to the sister and has the family crest. This is found by the ruthless governor Scarpia played by the Baritone George Gagnidre to brilliant effect. He persuades Tosca to go off in search of her alleged miscreant lover followed by one of his men who sees where the artist is located but when they arrive the escaped prisoner cannot be found so they arrest the painter played by the great tenor Roberto Alagna who I last saw in the Met Carmen and who is playing this role in the Christmas New Year production at the ROH which I will experiencing in person in the New Year and where the tickets arrived last week.

I felt his voice has become stronger and richer than previously although it may be more to do with the nature of the two roles and his two arias brought the house down as they say such was his emotional power. Scarpia then has Tosca also brought to the palace where he is seen being entertained by three women to commercial virtue and where he plots to use the situation of power to possess Tosca. He openly sings that his interest is only one of lust and that once achieved he likes to move on, rather like former President Kennedy who got a headache if he did not have sex with a new woman everyday. In this instance Scarpia preferred situation where he took women against their will and in Tosca is his best challenge to date because of her spiritual strength she sings in the Cathedral choir as well as commitment to one man and intolerance of unfaithfulness. He ensure she is a witness to the torturing of her lover and then offers them freedom if she accepts his lust. He explains to that the lover will be shot but this will be a fake as the guns will fire blanks and he tells his henchman to undertake a similar execution to a previous occasion. What Tosca does not know is that the previous execution was also a fatal one presented as a fake to get his way with someone else.

She yields up the hiding place to the despair of her lover. Angelotti is reported to have committed suicide rather than be captured.

After Scarpia signs the release warrant Tosca chances on a knife and stabs the lecher to death. She visits the jail as requested earlier and explains what is to happen to her lover and that he must pretend to be dead and not move until the soldiers leave. To her horror she finds that he has been killed and this coincides with the discovery of the body of Scarpia. Rather than face capture she throws herself off the battlements to her death. This proved to be one of the great operas an amazingly I then discovered there is to be a performance locally at the Sunderland Empire next April

Verdi Les Vepres Siciliannes

It is time to devote writing to recent cultural experiences of considerable merit and first a great discovery in Grand Opera, Les Vepres Sicilliennes by Verdi from the Royal Opera House London broadcast live at 17,45 on Monday November 4^th at the Cineworld Bolden at a cost of £10,89, In addition to the petrol travel cost, a coffee at McDonalds beforehand £1.19 and a cherry ice cream during one of the intervals £2.20, the overall expenditure if one includes meals cooked at home would at no more come to £25 whereas to have travelled to London with overnight accommodation and cost of a best seat in the house ticket, assuming gaining all the best deals by booking in advance the cost would have been no less than £250 and likely to have been significantly more. So while it would be great to hear my favourite works in all the great Opera Houses of the World once. This is the life as it is claimed.

The opera is rarely performed which I do not understand why given it overwhelming beauty and intensity written for the Paris Opera House with its first performance in 1855. Whereas I have always been disappointed that Carmen is sung in French and not Spanish the land where it is set. This opera is best sung in French instead of the Italian, or Sicilian which is the basis for the story based on a situation in the that country as it was then in 1282 and its capital Palermo.

What the Director of the Royal Opera House performances has done is to set the Opera not in 1285 Palermo but 1855 Paris which makes more poignant the struggle of the Sicillennes against the brutal occupiers of their country who regarded any local woman, whether she was married or not as a prize to be used as they wanted, ironically in this instance the occupying power was France with the opera created within the Age of Revolutions.

　

The first two and final two acts are of 70 minutes with the third performed by a corps des ballet in Paris but in this production there are important ballet sequences throughout the five acts, notable with the overture and introduction in which the ruthless French commander of the Island rapes a young woman, in this instance a member of the ballet and where the ballet master feels driven from his homeland by his experience.

Jean Procida was a young doctor in the original performance and he is played by an outstanding young baritone Erwin Schrott from Uruguay who looks younger than his 41 years and is the life partner of the great Russian soprano Anna Netrebeko with whom they have a son. Procida was already a Patriot and it his leadership return which is eagerly awaited by those who still nurture their home of a Sicily freed from French rule.

One of these is Helene played by a the French Soprano Lianna Haroutoinian, a mature woman of ample size playing a young girl who is devastated by the death of her brother, another patriot at the hands of the Island ruler Guy de Montfort, and intent on revenge with her suitor the young Henry played the similarly mature and amble American tenor Bryn Hymel so this couple is well suited in terms of age and physique which is always desirable these days when portraying an attraction both loving and or sexual.

Unaware that Henry is his son or Monfont his father, the ruler is interested in Henry who is imprisoned for his anti French interests and ruler offers him a role in the country if eh keeps away from Helene In the second Act which follows on quickly from the first Procida return home determined to lea a revolution but finds he majority of people either too frightened or too complacent to support and he relies on a few patriots, including Henry and Helene who he meets upon landing.

The way the story is told is to combine aspect of the original location of Sicily with the Paris Opera House with the tiered side of the Opera house an integral part of the set and used for the chorus of occupying soldiers with the Siciliennes, peasants attired form the chorus on stage there are also reflecting mirrors when the dancers appear.

The trio plan to launch an uprising during a festival celebrating the marriage of young Siciliennes and Henry swears to kill Monfort to avenge the brother of Helene whose skull she holds and in return she gives the love from he seeks.

Just before the festivities and uprising the ruler‘s men arrive bringing an invitation for Henry to attend a ball and after he refuses he arrested and dragged off. Procida arrives too late to intervene and too late to stop some of the soldiers carrying of the Sicilliennes would be brides and some of the wives and mothers for their own pleasure. Procida and Helene determine to gate crash the ball in an effort to save Henry more than the Sicilian women and they berate the menfolk for allowing this to happen without resistance.

It was at this point that the first long interval occurred for 35 mins with after around 20 an interview with the Musical director from the bar restaurant where staff are clearing the tables from those who had booked to take one of their courses at this point.

It is in the act that the rule receives a letter written by the woman he abducted and raped when he first arrived on the island to say that her son Henry was his child. She had now died. Monfort is overjoyed at the news although sad that he had remained unaware of the existence of his son. During the ballet which takes place at the ball, Procida and Helene are horrified when they and their friends are exposed by Henry who is unwilling to be responsible for the death of his father however much he hates the man. His friends are horrified by this betrayal and scene wends in dramatic fashion as it appears the revels are all shot with the exception of Henry. Helene and Procida are in fact imprisoned before execution which is the scene at the commencement of fourth act after a further local interval, During the first I had enjoyed a scoop of cherry ice cream but stayed in place for the second apart from a comfort break. I think it was in the second break that a short film was shown on the creation of the ballet sequences.

Henry obtains a pass to try and explain to Helene the reason for his betrayal and to regain her love and to die with her. He is able to save her and Procida by accepting Monfort as his father who arranges their marriage which will mark a new relationship between the French and the Sicilliennes. Helene is then advised by Procida that he has arranged for an uprising and massacre of the French one she marries Henry and the bells ring out their joy. She rejects Henry at the last moment to avoid the bloodshed but Monfont seeing the unhappiness of the son and sensing that Helene also loves the young man orders the marriage to take place and for the bells to commence to ring. The Opera ends suddenly rather than dramatically without the massacre being shown.

The Sicilian Vespers (Italian: Vespri siciliani Sicilian: Vespiri siciliani) is the name given to the successful rebellion on the island of Sicily that broke out on the Easter of 1282 against the rule of the French/Capetian king Charles I, who had ruled the Kingdom of Sicily since 1266. Within six weeks, three thousand French men and women were slain by the rebels and the government of King Charles lost control of the island. It was the beginning of the War of the Sicilian Vespers. The rebellion commenced with the bells sounding for the vespers as the crown turned on the French after a man had been murdered for attempting to protect his wife from sexual advances.