Boos at the Met

We were in Lincoln Plaza for the gala opening of the new Met season Monday night, the performance inside broadcast on HD screens in the Plaza and a mile further south in Times Square. Tosca by Puccini. This Tosca, the Finnish soprano Karita Mattila , has been plastered -- poised to leap to her death -- for weeks on pretty near every bus and billboard in Manhattan. Director Luc Bondy promised a production that would not get in the way of the music. Still pretty new to all this, I came with no expectations, a rudimentary -- mostly act III -- knowledge of the plot and no understanding of the historical background or, for that matter, that each of the three acts is set in a real place that can still be visited. So for me, the production succeeded. The settings seemed functional, too dark, austere, but not distracting from the music. The palace vamps cavorting with Scarpia (George Gagnidze) at the beginning of Act II were a bit cringe-inducing, aside from most assuredly not appearing in the libretto, but I was OK with Tosca slashing her lover's painting and Scarpia canoodling with a statue of the Madonna. It certainly wasn't the 25 year old Zefferelli production, beloved by many, never seen by me, but it was believable -- Scarpia is a conniving lout, Tosca is jealous and passionate -- and true, I thought, to the goal of letting the music speak. The principals and conductor James Levine received rich ovations at curtain call, but then the storm of boos for Bondy and the production team, took us completely by surprise and seemed to have the same impact on the cast and artistic team. The line of held hands swayed, and seemed for a moment unsure whether to step forward again into the mixed reception, for some cheers had now answered the booing. Here's the lesson: you stay there bowing no matter what the sounds. And here's another: a little controversy is good for box office; the remaining Tosca performances are all sold out. And here's a third: in New York at least, don't mess with an overstuffed warhorse. But the bottom line, I think, is that unlike Mary Zimmerman who last season thought so little of La Somnabula that she had to wrap it as an opera within the opera cliche, Bondy did respect the work and gave it a setting to unleash its complexity and its passion. The singers did the rest and did it well.