Word: scarpia
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...finale of Act I was a hopeless bungle, due to an awkward set that forced the ecclesiastical procession into the body of the church, an amateur chorus, a green Scarpia (Lawrence Tibbett), the lack of an organ and the sluggish conducting of Merola. . . . Any unforeseen gap she [Jeritza] would fill with her bloodcurdling shrieks or her hollow whispers; she raved, raced and ranted all over the scene, she trembled like a palsied aspen leaf; betimes she played the accomplished acrobat, and, of course, she sang most of the 'Viss d'Arte' lying face downward, as if praying...
...audiences glow in deep moral satisfaction over the ruddy Carmen or ponderous Scarpia who they hear is really a fishmonger's child from Oklahoma...
Ganna Walska (Mrs. Harold Fowler McCormick): "Belgrade, 950 miles distant from Paris, is the capital of Jugoslavia. There I, earnest singer, appeared in the title role of Tosca. I stabbed the Baron Scarpia of the piece so vigorously that I broke my stage property knife. I got five curtain calls, and was pleased with this tribute to me, after my unkind treatment in the U. S. (TIME, Oct. 26, 1925) and my recent failure to secure a stage in Paris, even after buying, as I thought, an opera house for myself...
...operatic emotions. Jealous first, then playful, loving completely Mario Cavaradossi, she brings him thus unwillingly into a political trap laid by Chief of Police Antonio Scotti, sleekest of nil Searpias, who wants the lady for himself. The second act will come with his melodramatic crescendoes. Tosca will surrender and Scarpia will supposedly draw up his pardon while Tosca's hand, fumbling, despairing, will find the carving knife on a supper table. She will stab him, steal away hugger-mugger to the condemned Cavaradossi. But Scarpia will have double-crossed her as he has hundreds of performances before, will have served...
...Manhattan. Having opened splendidly with La Gioconda (during which the spotlight played quite properly upon the boxholders instead of the stars), the Metropolitan (TIME, Nov. 2) went on with its season. Maria Jeritza as Tosca, lying in a lovely heap upon the floor of Scarpia's apartments, delivered a moving and irrelevant commentary upon love and art; Mme. A Ida (wife of Giulio Gatti-Casizza) appeared in La Bohème; Aida was given in Brooklyn...