TOSCA

France/Germany/Italy/UK, 119 minutes, Colour.
Angela Gheorghiu, Roberta Alagna, Ruggiero Raimondi.
Directed by Benoit Jacquot.

Tosca is a film version of Puccini's celebrated opera. The director is Benoit Jacquot, a director of French dramas which, at the end of the 20th century, included Pas de Scandale and Sade. A friend urged him to do this opera. He decided to do it in three different ways: rehearsal sequences are filmed in black and white video and are introducing the film, interspersed with the first act, and used as the conclusion; he added video sequences, of a rather blurred style, of the locations in which the opera takes place, Rome, the Church of San Andrea Della Valle and the Castel San Angelo - declaring that the grainy images are similar to the kinds of images that may be going through audiences' minds as they listen to the music; the opera itself done in brilliant and stark style on sound stages resembling the church, Castel San Angelo, its towers. The latter part of the film, the major part, is done in strikingly vivid colours, especially Tosca in the second and third acts in her long flowing red dress.

Puccini's opera runs for two hours, an ideal length for an opera film, according to Jacquot. He lets the music speak for itself, often highlighting the three principals in long close-ups and at different angles for the dramatic impact of their singing. Angela Gheorghiu is a strong and beautiful screen presence, making Tosca's melodramatic and violent actions credible. Her husband, Roberto Alagna, is the cavaliere, the artist who shelters a sympathiser to Napoleon and becomes the victim of the governor of Rome, Scapia. Ruggiero Raimondi is excellent as Scapia, singing magnificently as well as conveying the menace and abuse of authority.

Opera fans will be interested in this interpretation of the story. The issues of the story are the social background of Rome, a dictatorship and violence in its administration, the background of the Napoleonic wars and the defeat of the Italians at Marengo. The film also plays on themes of religion, the first act taking place in the church where the cavaliere is painting a portrait of a woman to whom he is attracted and where he meets his diva mistress, Tosca. It has themes of love, betrayal, lust, self-sacrifice.

The film joins a number of films of operas directed by significant directors (rather than opera directors). They include Losey's Don Giovanni, Bergman's The Magic Flute, Rosi's Carmen, Zeffirelli's La Traviata and Othello, and the series of ten stories with operatic arias, directed by ten directors, Aria.