Tosca by Giacomo Puccini

Jul 4, 2019

2h 5m

★ 8.0

Festival Aix-en-Provence 2019

Overview

As part of the 2019 Aix-en-Provence Opera Festival, filmmaker Christophe Honoré delivers an innovative staging of Giacomo Puccini's famous drama. His cleverly staged "opera within the opera" is a melancholy homage to the fascinating figure of the diva, who thrives on art and love and upsets the laws of time and death.

Genres

Music

Production Companies

Festival Aix-en-Provence

Radio France

Mezzo

ARTE

France Télévisions

Unitel

Tosca by Giacomo Puccini Trailers

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Cast

Floria Tosca

Angel Blue

La Prima Donna

Catherine Malfitano

Mario Cavaradossi

Joseph Calleja

Cesare Angelotti

Simon Shibambu

Le sacristain

Leonardo Galeazzi

Sciarrone

Jean Gabriel Saint Martin

Spoletta

Michael Smallwood

Il Barone Scarpia

Alexey Markov

Live performance from Cologne Opera. Conlon conducts a skittishly dynamic performance of Don Giovanni. He relies on Thomas Allen’s tough Don to give the work much of its dark menace and on Holle’s terrifying Commendatore to provide the moral outrage – his job is to keep things moving, and he does. The exteriors – blank city spaces reminiscent of the paintings of Giorgio De Chirico – and moodily claustrophobic interiors mirror effectively the anguish of the orphaned Anna and the abandoned Elvira; this is a performance in which the two women victims of the Don function effectively as correctives to his libertine charm. Andrea Rost as Zerlina brings real delicacy to her role, reminding us that “La ci darem la mano” is a duet about her flirtation with Don Giovanni and not just a famous stand-alone moment. This is an admirable presentation of a fine performance.

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