I think last night is only the second time I've left the opera early. Normally, I want to get my money's worth, but (1) it's just Tosca; (2) Nuphy was tired, too; (3) the singers' weren't great; and (4) Act 3 is anticlimactic anyway. So much better to end with Tosca killing Scarpia and making her escape with a letter of safe passage out of the country rather than the melodramatic bullshit that follows.
I spent the whole time trying to fantasise my way into an interesting opera. I kind of made the first act work by pretending that the woman who entred was someone other than who Cavaradossi was just singing undying love to, thus turning his seemingly endless tender exchange with Tosca into a morass of slimy deceit. My real break, however, came in Act 2. Scarpia's quarters, it turns out, are built over a Hellmouth, which becomes obvious when he sends Cavaradossi into it to be tortured by demonic minions. If he's the infernal undead overlord, then that makes Floria Tosca the Buffy Summers of her age. It's a little difficult to make her the Slayer when she's alone in a room with her nemesis for more than five minutes without a single boot to the head, but just think of her as a demure late 18th-century vampire killer who's not very good at her job.
Sure, the sets are Zeffirelli. That just means they're opulent, not that they're any good. The church, in particular, is a disaster; it's completely impossible to locate any of the entrances or exits. (Clearly, at least one of them connects to the school basement where a junior prom is being held. At least I don't see any other way of explaining Tosca's fluffy pink dress and lack of a coat.) Ramey should retire. Said to say, I know; his voice is still strong, but it's lost all edge. It was more like Scarpia the Creepy Grampa than the satanic heavy that overripe heirloom peach of an opera requires.
Must dash--Mom's arrival is iminent and there's nothing to eat in the house but heaps of dessicated Oriental rubbish and frozen dead baby pig.
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