GREAT PERFORMANCES

AT THE MET: TOSCA

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16 @ 7:00PM & 11:00PM

A new production of Puccini’s Tosca starring Karita Mattila opens THIRTEEN’s Great Performances at the Met’s fourth season on PBS. Mattila sings the title role of Tosca for the first time outside her native Finland, opposite Marcelo Álvarez as Cavaradossi. George Gagnidze is Scarpia and Paul Plishka is the Sacristan. Joseph Colaneri conducts, and acclaimed director Luc Bondy makes his Met debut with the production, which attracted extraordinary attention when it opened the Met’s current season. Bondy, among the world’s most renowned directors of opera and theater, has kept his Tosca in the Napoleonic era. “Directing singers in a realistic and precise way is more important than translating this kind of story to today,” he says. “What I’d like to bring out in my production is that difference between blind passion and cold strategy.” Mattila, who has collaborated with Bondy in the past, says, “Tosca uses her beauty as an asset in a man’s world. But no matter how strong she is, her power has limits because she’s a woman. This fragile side is what makes it interesting – and this is where the real work with the director begins.”
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