Pasolini’s Tosca
OperaMunich’s new production of Puccini’s shocker is set in 1975 in Rome where Pier Paolo Pasolini is filming ‘The 120 Days of Sodom’.
The Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó opens his interpretation with fascist soldiers leading naked victims onto the stage.
Eleonora Buratto sings the title role, Charles Castronovo is Cavaradossi, Ludovic Tézier steals the show as Scarpia.
images: BSO/ Wilfried Hösl
They sounded good on the radio.
And Pasolini ‘s shockers are very close to Puccini’s.
That film was the most disgusting and depressing thing I’ve ever seen. Much as I like Charles and Ludo I would never want to be subjected to any footage of Pasolini’s perverted mess, however discreetly it may be running in the background.
“I sat through every disgusting frame of this film, twice.”
I love his other films, but that one was just hideous.
Whatever may have a shock effect, no matter how degraded, anything goes except the work itself.
I don’t see anything shocking in the above production.
Twisting libretti into a show of sex and violence has been the norm in many Regietheater productions for at least a generation. New productions of top opera houses, however, can still work well in radio broadcasts, unless there is too much stage noise.
Pasolini’s “Salò” is much more than a “show of sex and violence”.
Sex, violence AND politics.
So are many Regietheater productions. But it’s getting old.
How does a production of Tosca that’s set in 1975 work around the rather explicit references to Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) in acts one and two?
Do you really think that the plot and themes explored in the opera depend on those references being contextualized in a 19th century setting?
Yes.
I guess the same way a lounge singer can exile or jail an Italian count from Las Vegas in 1965 and a hitman can agree to assassinate said lounge singer and accept his payment in scudi. It can’t.It’s impossible but it doesn’t bother these “directors” because w/o their brilliance, we wouldn’t know what the opera is about. And, of course, the conflict between Lucia’s family and the Ravenwoods is an important part of the story of rust belt America.
This is why my professor Dr. Kerman called it “a shabby little shocker” when I took his elective opera class in the ’80’s.
Did Joseph Kerman express any thoughts about Regietheater? It hadn’t taken over the US yet, but it was getting started in Europe.
No by that time he no longer traveled much outside of U.S., occasionally he would do talks at SF Opera and Cal Performances. The textbook used for the opera class was, naturally, his “Opera as Drama”.
Keep in mind he wrote the book as a young man and had since changed his mind on some things, like Baroque opera. A day after a school performance of Handel’s “Ariodante” (edition: Alan Curtis, his Berkeley colleague) he played a few bars from it in class, clearly enjoying it.
Thank you. You must have been lucky to have studied at Berkely in the 1980s. It had a dream-team faculty at the time, I think. Perhaps it still does, but I am not up-to-date.
Yes it did… Kerman, Taruskin, Curtis…all experts in their respective fields. I was premed but always studied in the music library lol. Now I’m a physician and an opera traveler. Off to the Met and DC next month, La Scala in October!
Ascoltata in radio si apprezza la musica e le voci : tutte magnifiche Castronovo al debutto ha cantato benissimo . Buratto ottima come Terzier.
I love most of Pasolini’s other movies, but this one stunk to high heaven, and I’ve never succeeded in sitting through the entire film – rather, I was one of many in the theater who fled to the lobby during several unbearable scenes. Nobody deserves to be murdered the savage way in which Pasolini was in 1975 – just shortly after this film was made – but if that was the direction in which he was going, thank God he didn’t live to make another hideous film like this one.
How incredibly offensive. Pasolini’s film was deliberately offensive, but to layer that onto Tosca is criminal.
24 July 2024: This production was dreadful and ridiculous, being mainly about an external and unconnected character’s work, starting with the programme which contains mainly images of that character’s work. As for the performance, the references to the external character’s work were irrelevant and distracting. For instance, poor Mario had to sing e lucevan le stelle with lots of images from that character’s films abounding but not of Tosca who is whom he was singing about. Gratuitous nudity and violence did nothing to enhance. A chapel turned into a chest; Mario shot side on but blood bursting supposedly from his back – it insults the intelligence! If people don’t like the opera in the spirit or way it was written, they can go write their own operas and not violate these classic masterpieces and force nonsense down the paying public’ s throats. Kaufmann, Tezier and Buratto did their best in the circumstances, being the consumate professionals that they are . Our advice – if you attend this performance, watch it with your eyes closed!