Review: TOSCA at the Vienna State Opera with Jonas Kaufmann and Martina Serafin.
By Natalia DiBartolo © DiBartolocritic
Are you in Vienna staging your millionth Tosca? Running to the theater, also because of the announced Gheorghiu and Kaufmann on the bill, at least you can see the latter.
In fact, Gheorghiu, indisposed just in the last performance, was promptly replaced by Martina Serafin and I saw that play. Personally Tosca in Vienna seems to me the work of substitutions. And Serafin is always the protagonist.
Two years ago, in fact, at the premiere on 2 December, the soprano, perhaps in an interpretative impetus, threw herself badly from the terraces of Castel Sant'Angelo and the mattresses were not enough to cushion the blow: she broke her leg. Winding consternation in the Viennese theater, but immediate replacement with Maria José Siri, who was my Tosca at the time and did not make me regret her.
This of’ May 8, 2017 was therefore for me the sequel "Tosca, the return", with Serafin taken by the hair and replaced by Gheorghiu at the last minute. It was destiny that, sooner or later, I saw Martina as Floria in Vienna. Same production by Nicola Benois, moreover, as two years ago. It felt like déjà vu, but in reality it wasn't at all: it also changed il Direttore, Il M° Eivind Gullberg Jensen, and therefore changed a lot. Apart from the fact that the supporting actors also changed, as well as the protagonists, and the sexton by Paolo Rumetz it was clearly superior to the one seen during Serafin's stay in the hospital, as it was here’Angelotti di Clemens Unterreiner.
But let's get to the point and the point was Jonas Kaufmann as Cavaradossi. Legions of fans thronged the theater, five minutes of applause for "E lucevan le stelle". Encore granted, like a relic…and from here we need to start to talk about this Viennese Tosca with an idolized protagonist, but one who has never completely convinced me personally as a vocal setting in the song that he is not German.
After listening to him in Munich a few months ago as an excellent Andrea Chénier, which is perhaps the part in the Italian Opera that best suits him vocally, now in this Puccini role, already tested for some time, it was all about listening. I don't like his color, burnished in the German style, nor do I like his emission technique in Italian (or even in French) opera. But Kaufmann has changed a lot in recent years, definitely for the better. He understood that he doesn't have to stamp in piano and pianissimo. But does he sometimes forget it? Perhaps he too forgot it in the first "E lucevan le stelle", where he touched the falsetto in an unbearable way. Automatic consideration: "it's clear: he goes into falsetto because he doesn't know how to modulate his voice in the piano". Mistake! He knows it very well, however! If he hadn't known, al bis would not finally have sung the famous aria to perfection. But then, if you know how Puccini sings, why do you sing him like Bizet from Les pêcheurs de perles?
What is certain is that this very good-looking young man remains one of the vocal phenomena of the last decade. But if the handsome Jonas pretends to forget to support the piano (it is much more comfortable for him, the fans applaud him anyway), still in the third act, after that deluge of applause and the encore, he is totally lost in Serafin's arms, probably due to a memory lapse after the stress of the encore. Part of the duet has gone slurred not only in the words, but also in the notes. Serafin, desolate, could only cover him with her tonnage. You praise Maestro Jensen who was able to save goat and cabbage, following him and feeding him with a teaspoon, in improvised variations that Puccini must have listened to from the Empyrean with a certain interest. Then Jonas recovered, but this human side was almost tenderness. The young man is of flesh and blood and the tension plays tricks on him too, who in any case gets some booing, amidst the ovations of the delirious fans, in Vienna almost always gets him.
Transeat. A Tosca that overall was not exactly textbook, because if Master Jensen he supported the interpreter in difficulty with great skill, on the other hand he gave breath to the Wieners non-stop, for the entire representation: a clang at times unbearable, a stratospheric volume of a wonderful orchestra. The Maestro raged happily, probably thanks to the fact that the voices on stage were capable of not letting themselves be covered.
La Serafinin fact, although not very expressive, he has a ringing and well projected voice, he sang correctly, his B flat from the "Vissi d'arte" was in tune and everything else in its place. And then the suicide from the stands this time was soft…Tosca went down two or three steps before disappearing into the void. I dare you: the jump was the same as two years ago!
Lo Shoe by Marco Vratogna, on the other hand, if vocally he went much better than how I had heard him alongside Opolais in Baden Baden last April, here in Vienna he sounded deeply bored. It must have been the "slimy" effect he wanted to achieve, but what is certain is that his routine Scarpia would not have frightened a fly.
The production, seen and revised, of Nicholas Benois has once again lent the viewer the very traditional setting and the same defects found two years ago: the painter's colors, June of the year 1800, were in the tube! Still? And, like last time, the jailer's pen in the last act had no inkwell, but wrote better than a biro. Kaufmann does not have the promptness and histrionic ability of Alagna, who invented the inkwell two years ago: here a whole letter was written without ink…
Final applause that lasted more than a quarter of an hour, as obviously imagined; apotheosis of Kaufmann, applause for all. But Tosca in Vienna is still always a show not to be missed.
Who will replace who at my next Tosca?
Natalia DiBartolo © DiBartolocritic
PHOTOS © Wiener Staatsoper | Michael Pöhn