Tosca is a beautiful, stuck-up, vain woman who tortures her lover with prideful and spiteful remonstrances. When the lover capitulates to her whimsical demand for sobering affection, he touches her long black hair. “Don’t mess up my hair!” she screams. This is Puccini’s heroine, whose fickleness ultimately ends in tragedy. And why not? Scarpia saw her vanity as a the sliver of opportunity for which he could leverage to arrest and murder her lover, then take Tosca as his own lover.Now that’s entertainment.
The music was beautiful, as is found in all operas. This night was particularly special for me because the production took place at the Prague State Opera House, a magnificent, 120-year-old building. Inside, the auditorium is a small space, by comparison to huge arenas of the modern variety. The stalls are gilt trimmed stucco creations. The ceiling has frescos painted by a famous Czech artist. The accoustics, as one might imagine, are superb.
The spectacle, the opulence, the very cool stall a sat in, and the good champagne at intermission, made the already cheap, “opera for the masses” price a night to remember. Saw a pretty good accident on the road outside the opera house, too.
Most of my teaching schedule is set. The classes sound fun. One gentelman, a lawyer in the center of Prague, wants someone he can converse with for 45 min each week. He just wants to speak English with an American so he can stay in practice and keep up with the idioms and nomenclature. That could be really fun.
