Met confirms Tosca upheaval
NewsThe Metropolitan Opera, which never tells the whole truth if it can get away with half, confirmed overnight that the Russian bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin has been replaced as Scarpia in Tosca by George Gagnidze .
The show opens on Thursday.
The Met says ‘Nikitin will not be appearing … due to illness.’
Cast sources say otherwise.
Nikitin will start rehearsals in Paris shortly for next month’s Mussorgsky Khovanschina.
Compatriot?!
Gagnidze is Georgian.
One international baritone replaces another on short notice. This happens in opera. And the Met doesn’t publicly disclose all the gory details – probably for legal reasons. Nothing to see here.
Completely agree. Why on earth should we expect the Met to disclose “the whole truth”? What enterprise, what newspaper, what university discloses “the whole truth” of its decisions to the public? None of them do, and wisely and rightfully so. Unless something morally or legally abhorrent happened, it is none of our business. Typical Met bashing.
The replacement of one cast member, albeit a leading role, hardly constitutes “upheaval.” Mr. Gagnidze has sung Scarpia many times previously at the Met and is very good in the role.
I know. Some people just like to create drama. It’s not like there is anything wrong with Gagnidze.
The only decent Scarpias at the Met in the past 10 or even 20 years have been Michael Volle, Falk Struckmann and perhaps Wolfgang Koch, not regularly featured at the Met, which prefers to continually inflict upon us the same mediocre Eastern European retreads – Gagnidze, Lucic etc. So uninspiring and unimaginative is the casting there.
You have watched too many Bond films. You need to come away from the assumption that the baddie must be played by a German.
In general, Germans are far superior classical musicians to Russians and other Eastern Europeans.
Ruggiero Raimondi – the best Scarpia in recent decades. I don’t know if he sang the role for the Met.
I assume you mean Ruggero Raimondi, and no, he never sang Scarpia at the Met, and only five times at Wiener Staatsoper, the last at age 69.
I suppose it doesn’t fall under the category of “recent decades” but my favourite Scarpia was Tito Gobbi.
Perhaps surprisingly, they missed his Scarpia entirely. His most-performed Met role was Banquo, followed by Silva in Ernani, Basilio in Barbiere, and two Mozarts, Figaro and Don Giovanni.
His only Puccini role for the Met was two Collines on the spring tour in 1972.
He sang there a fair amount over a long period, but there were also long breaks that covered some of his best years.
For most of that time, he was known as a bass not a bass-baritone so more baritone-oriented roles such as Scarpia, Iago etc. were presumably never offered to him. Although he would certainly have been at least as impressive in them as the ubiquitous James Morris.
Raimondi had a small voice, focused, but small. His Scarpia worked fine in a smaller house, but likely would not have been adequate for the MET.
Great replacement. Nicotine was pretend coughing in rehearsals. Was loud and rude. So if he was sick for real or just wanted to get the heck out doesn’t matter. The audience is gaining a great and scary replacement