[Met Performance] CID:88050



Tosca
Metropolitan Opera House, Fri, November 7, 1924




Tosca (182)
Giacomo Puccini | Luigi Illica/Giuseppe Giacosa
Tosca
Maria Jeritza

Cavaradossi
Miguel Fleta

Scarpia
Antonio Scotti

Sacristan
Pompilio Malatesta

Spoletta
Angelo Badà

Angelotti
Paolo Ananian

Sciarrone
Vincenzo Reschiglian

Shepherd
Henriette Wakefield

Jailer
Millo Picco


Conductor
Tullio Serafin


Director
Wilhelm Von Wymetal

Set Designer
Mario Sala





Tosca received six performances this season.

Review 1:

Review by W. J. Henderson in The New York Sun:

'TOSCA' HAS ORIGINAL LUCIDITY

Serafin Partly Restores Balance to Puccini Performance at the Metropolitan

Puccini's "Tosca" promises to be less obstreperous this season than it has been in recent winters. Under the baton of Tullio Serafin, who conducted the performance at the Metropolitan Opera House last evening, its partly lost balance was restored and, while it was not a representation persuasive by subtlety, it was one in which many refinements long obscured were once more brought to the surface and a score which had suffered from growing opacity regained something of its original lucidity.?

"Tosca" is sheer melodrama and exhibits Puccini's art in its most theatrical mood. The effects are almost shameless in their bald effrontery, and therefore Mr. Serafin deserves praise for a reading whic, by its discretion, its fine preservation of the lyric tone and of the balance between voices and orchestra, was admirable from beginning to end. It seems probable that whenever he conducts the statue will be on the stage and the pedestal in the orchestra, and that if singers force their voices they will have only themselves to blame.

Mme. Jeritza was the same tall and sinuous Tosca as she was last season. She had some difficulties in her acting because Mr. Fleta, the tenor, was so much shorter than she. But, on the whole, her Tosca showed improvement, chiefly on the musical side. Mme. Jeritza is an honest artist who is not content with a great popular success easily won. It is plain that she knows the nature of her technical deficiencies and is trying earnestly to remove them. With her beautiful voice and her keen dramatic instinct she should rise to much greater artistic heights than she has yet reached. She evidently intends to do so, and for this she deserves all honor.

Mr. Fleta is a young singer and his experience is not sufficient to have shown him how best to use his powers. He does not practice economy in his phrasing, but taxes his breath in unnecessary places. He will get over this. Meanwhile opera goers can enjoy listening to his fresh and beautiful voice and can yield themselves to the ardor of his style.

Review 2:

Review of guest critic Ernest Newman in the Post

"Tosca" at the Metropolitan

"Tosca," I always knew, is melo-drama, but not until last night did I know that it was melodrama with two o's and three r's. Mr. Serafin drew every drop of blood-and-thunder out of the orchestral score. Mr. Fleta never left us in the slightest doubt as to which were the high notes and the loud notes in Cavaradossi's part. Mr. Scotti apparently thought it useless to waste subtlety on Scarpia when vehemence would do just as well. I have hitherto regarded Scarpia as a villain indeed, but a polished gentleman with it all; he may have been a little deficient in morals, perhaps, but at any rate his manners were all right. He had a serpent's venom and a serpent's sleekness. He carried a rapier, not a bludgeon.

But if Mr. Scotti's conception of the part is the right one, I have sadly misunderstood Signor Scarpia until now, for what Mr. Scotti gave us was a red-blooded, two-fisted, ten-toed he-Scarpia of whom I could well believe that, as Tosca says over his dead body, "before this man all Rome trembled." He would have set up tremors in a cave-man. And Mme. Jeritza, our delicate, fine-spirited Elizabeth of a couple of evenings ago, no doubt felt that it was up to her to tune in to the wavelength of the others, and coarsened her style accordingly. She is much too good for this sort of rant; she suggested to me a Derby winner between the shafts of a butcher's cart.

The second act was the roughest "Tosca" within my experience. Never have I seen two characters on the stage "mix it" like this. I will say this for Mr. Scotti, that although he knew he had to go under at the finish or ruin Tosca's big scene, he put up a splendid fight. Other Scarpias allow themselves to be counted out after one jab from the table knife. Mr. Scotti rose at the count of eight, and the uppercut with which he was at last put to sleep was a beauty. The winner left the ring without a mark. The weights were not given in the programme, but Mme. Jeritza had the advantage in reach.



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