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Tosca
American Academy of Music, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Tue, December 9, 1952
Tosca (302)
Giacomo Puccini | Luigi Illica/Giuseppe Giacosa
Review 1:
Review of Archer Winston, TV reviewer of the Post
?Carmen? Telecast Pros and Cons
The Thursday night telecast of the Metropolitan?s ?Carmen? to a nation-wide audience of some 70,000 music lovers was an historic event, as nobody will deny. The handwriting was certainly on the wall even if you couldn?t read it. One must hope the audience was composed of music lovers rather than movie-goers or lovers of visual delights.
This observer saw ?Carmen? at the small Guild Theater on 50th Street, and from a good seat. But for a while he thought his eyesight was failing. The longshots vouchsafed little more than a chiaroscuro view in black and white of the stage composition. You could identify a person as opposed to a table, and you could see movement if there were a dress, you could see it wasn?t a man?s trousers. But details like faces, the features on the faces, and items of clothing were completely fuzzed out.
From a middle distance one could identity characters but not take pleasure in the process. A generally gray monochrome made you aware of the location, the definition one sees in mostly black and white movies. But it was so noticeably unreal it brought to consciousness the lack of color. Oddly, the well photographed, non-color movies rarely inspire the same sense of loss.
In the close-ups there was a considerable improvement in the basic business of knowing who?s who. For instance, it was very easy to tell the difference between Rise Stevens, the Carmen, and Richard Tucker. At one point, as a matter of fact, when Rise was telling her fortune with cards on the floor, and the camera had a downward angle, it almost became embarrassingly easy. Still, I did have an uneasy sensation of mistaking Tucker for a fat MacArthur in a couple of the singer?s more heroic postures.
But to get down to a positive, constructive, and definitive criticism of the telecast ?Carmen,? I think they?re a little ahead of themselves. This thing isn?t going to be really popular until it looks better. It?s not going to win movie-goers away from either the theater showing a Hollywood item or the Drive-In with good cars to sit it. Its present appeal should be pretty well confined to opera-lovers who can?t get to the Met themselves for a variety of reasons, distance, dough, or debility. And even they might complain that the sound reproduction ranges from good to vibrantly tinny.
In addition to purely technical obstacles, telecast opera will always run up against the competition of superior realism in the specially prepared movies. The acting of operatic folk has frequently been laughable, and some of their more grandiose gesture are?well?operatic. The better the telecast becomes, the more visible that sort of thing will be. In short, as a test, as novelty, as an experiment, as the forerunner, this telecast ?Carmen? was important, but not as a finished product that will speed on present quality to general acceptance by the public.
During the second intermission there were several interviews with famous personages and one of these came up with some of the best unintended humor the screen has shown in many a day. George A. Sloan, chairman of the Metropolitan Opera board and actress Peggy Wood took turns in making a pitch for public support of the venture. What was so funny was the way the face of the unoccupied speaker gradually settled, subsided, and grew weary to the point of wariness of it, and then suddenly brightened again, only to sag again as the weight of work from the other beat against it. At this point the television was wonderfully clear and detailed. It made you think of two sleepy people gradually talking each other into submission in a worthy cause. That TV camera, it magnifies facial trifles, practically portraying inner states of mind and being. It?s frightening in what it does to real people.
Search by season: 1952-53
Search by title: Tosca,
Met careers
Tosca
American Academy of Music, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Tue, December 9, 1952
Tosca (302)
Giacomo Puccini | Luigi Illica/Giuseppe Giacosa
- Tosca
- Dorothy Kirsten
- Cavaradossi
- Ferruccio Tagliavini
- Scarpia
- Robert Weede
- Sacristan
- Lawrence Davidson
- Spoletta
- Alessio De Paolis
- Angelotti
- Lorenzo Alvary
- Sciarrone
- George Cehanovsky
- Shepherd
- Margaret Roggero
- Jailer
- Algerd Brazis
- Conductor
- Fausto Cleva
Review 1:
Review of Archer Winston, TV reviewer of the Post
?Carmen? Telecast Pros and Cons
The Thursday night telecast of the Metropolitan?s ?Carmen? to a nation-wide audience of some 70,000 music lovers was an historic event, as nobody will deny. The handwriting was certainly on the wall even if you couldn?t read it. One must hope the audience was composed of music lovers rather than movie-goers or lovers of visual delights.
This observer saw ?Carmen? at the small Guild Theater on 50th Street, and from a good seat. But for a while he thought his eyesight was failing. The longshots vouchsafed little more than a chiaroscuro view in black and white of the stage composition. You could identify a person as opposed to a table, and you could see movement if there were a dress, you could see it wasn?t a man?s trousers. But details like faces, the features on the faces, and items of clothing were completely fuzzed out.
From a middle distance one could identity characters but not take pleasure in the process. A generally gray monochrome made you aware of the location, the definition one sees in mostly black and white movies. But it was so noticeably unreal it brought to consciousness the lack of color. Oddly, the well photographed, non-color movies rarely inspire the same sense of loss.
In the close-ups there was a considerable improvement in the basic business of knowing who?s who. For instance, it was very easy to tell the difference between Rise Stevens, the Carmen, and Richard Tucker. At one point, as a matter of fact, when Rise was telling her fortune with cards on the floor, and the camera had a downward angle, it almost became embarrassingly easy. Still, I did have an uneasy sensation of mistaking Tucker for a fat MacArthur in a couple of the singer?s more heroic postures.
But to get down to a positive, constructive, and definitive criticism of the telecast ?Carmen,? I think they?re a little ahead of themselves. This thing isn?t going to be really popular until it looks better. It?s not going to win movie-goers away from either the theater showing a Hollywood item or the Drive-In with good cars to sit it. Its present appeal should be pretty well confined to opera-lovers who can?t get to the Met themselves for a variety of reasons, distance, dough, or debility. And even they might complain that the sound reproduction ranges from good to vibrantly tinny.
In addition to purely technical obstacles, telecast opera will always run up against the competition of superior realism in the specially prepared movies. The acting of operatic folk has frequently been laughable, and some of their more grandiose gesture are?well?operatic. The better the telecast becomes, the more visible that sort of thing will be. In short, as a test, as novelty, as an experiment, as the forerunner, this telecast ?Carmen? was important, but not as a finished product that will speed on present quality to general acceptance by the public.
During the second intermission there were several interviews with famous personages and one of these came up with some of the best unintended humor the screen has shown in many a day. George A. Sloan, chairman of the Metropolitan Opera board and actress Peggy Wood took turns in making a pitch for public support of the venture. What was so funny was the way the face of the unoccupied speaker gradually settled, subsided, and grew weary to the point of wariness of it, and then suddenly brightened again, only to sag again as the weight of work from the other beat against it. At this point the television was wonderfully clear and detailed. It made you think of two sleepy people gradually talking each other into submission in a worthy cause. That TV camera, it magnifies facial trifles, practically portraying inner states of mind and being. It?s frightening in what it does to real people.
Search by season: 1952-53
Search by title: Tosca,
Met careers