Tosca Recast

For 32 years Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera Company had a villain without peer. He seemed kindly enough backstage but when he strode before an audience as Baron Scarpia, Chief of the Roman Police in Puccini's Tosca, he became so sinister and malevolent that he set an all-time standard for that melodramatic role. Antonio Scotti was stabbed by 17 different Toscas from the time the opera had its U. S. premiere in 1901 until he sang his farewell (TIME. Jan. 30, 1933). Last week when the Metropolitan revived Tosca for the first time in three years, there was a new Scarpia, an 18th Tosca.

There would also have been a new Cavaradossi, victim of Scarpia's evil plotting, if, as the curtain went up, Tenor Richard Crooks had not been under ether for a serious appendectomy and Oldster Giovanni Martinelli had not rushed on to take his place. A new Tosca at the Metropolitan is bound to be compared with other singers who have made the role seem great. There were people in last week's audience who remembered Milka Ternina, dramatically exciting but plain to look at. Emma Eames had beauty but her emotions were chilled. In pre-War days Olive Fremstad and Geraldine Farrar were rivals for the role. Fremstad, at heart a Wagnerian, played it like a lioness. Farrar's conception was small, a little petulant. After Maria Jeritza's first breath- taking performance in 1921 the part was hers for the ten years she was at the Metropolitan. Upon her leaving, the opera was dropped from the repertoire until last week's revival.

Last week it was Lotte Lehmann's turn to exhibit a Tosca who was a simple, genuine woman, expertly tender in her scenes with Cavaradossi, wildly furious when she murdered Scarpia, crouched gloatingly over his body. The Scarpia was Baritone Lawrence Tibbett and it was his big chance to add another telling impersonation to his Simone Boccanegra and his Emperor Jones. But Tibbett was no great villain. He made himself a bigger nose but his make-up in general was unworthy of an actor with cinema training. His big voice boomed and he used brute force in his tussle with Lehmann. But his audience remembered too well the cunning of Scotti, the insinuating grace, the evil that seemed to lurk even in the folds of his cape.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.