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Having seen many operas before, Tosca I feel was one of the most musically interesting. The acts of the opera followed the movements in a piece of classical music. I was able to predict what would happen next or how the characters were feeling based on the theme of the music. Each act had a different musical personality. The last act was most notably significant in that the tone of the music changed to a simple melancholy melody. During Cavaradossi’s solo in the third act, there’s one haunting melody with a simple oboe that really brings a personality to the piece, and also brings a hint of what is to come next. Personally, I believe Puccini composed this opera in such a beautiful manner, I was so engulfed in the music that I was able to get more out of the performance as a whole.
Out of all the performances I have seen throughout the course of this semester, “Tosca”, no doubt, was and will remain the most memorable for me.
It was a pleasure to see an opera that incorporated all of the “Romeo and Juliet”-like elements, such as love, life and death, conflicts of people against authority, fights for freedom and independence, blood and violence, but at the same time was completely original and new.
Even though Tosca and her beloved Cavaradossi seem to be the center of the operatic performance, I still believe that Scarpia is the main character in the drama, due to the fact that he has the power to control the actions and fates of both Tosca and Cavaradossi:
he arrests Mario Cavaradossi, the brilliant painter, and sentences him to death in the Castel Sant’Angelo;
he then starts mentally torturing Tosca by offering her Cavaradossi’s freedom in exchange for one night spent together – this, of course, is intolerable to Tosca, since her high moral standards, supernatural love, and loyalty would never let her even think about being with anyone else but her beloved Cavaradossi;
Scarpia lies to Tosca when he tells her that the firing squad will use blanks. Tosca believes his words and feels confident about Cavaradossi’s safety, which makes her kill Scarpia by stabbing him with a knife – Scarpia planned everything ahead of time, so he makes Tosca pay for his death after, when the firing squad actually kills Tosca’s beloved;
Cavaradossi’s death makes Tosca commit suicide by throwing herself from the castle.
It is incredible how Scarpia acts as a driver and catalyst of the drama’s chain reaction, which makes me place this sadistic police chief in the center of all events.With the beginning of every new act I was impressed more and more, since It was just unbelievable, how the participants of the operatic performance managed to change the background and setting in just a couple of minutes during the transitions: the castles, the prison, the huge stairs – they all looked so massive and impossible to move or change in any way by human force, especially in a matter of minutes.
Certainly, the most beautiful moment of the whole performance was the act of Tosca throwing herself from the Castle, when the guards were trying to approach her. She is running up the stairs, and then for a moment the audience can not see her at all… (My heart was dancing at that moment) She appears, looks at the audience, and jumps – we only see her as she reaches a 45 degree angle with the floor of the castle, and then the lights disappear along with Tosca… No special sound effects… Nothing… She is gone… And that marks the end of the performance.
I am really happy I saw this performance. One of the best things I’ve seen in my life. Movie-class visual effects. I cannot express everything in words…
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