Customer Reviews

Tosca's Kiss - Il bacio di Tosca

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The characters are real. The lives they once shared were first class. Their passion for, and love of, opera and musical art lives strong in their hearts, their voices and their everyday selves. It's an honor to listen to their stories, to hear their voices strong as ever, and to experience the love for musical expression they shared with the world so long ago, and still do in this film. This movie is worthy of inclusion in the best operatic collections!

Stumbling across this film, made in 1984 by Daniel Schmid, justifies my Netflix bill for an entire year. In today's youth-obsessed culture, where we are eager to shower even the least talented with untold wealth, it is poignant to see artists who have given their very lives for music enduring retirement at Casa di Riposo Verdi in Milan. But enduring on their own terms - you cannot hold an opera stage without a supreme sense of self. Their daily world is full of music and reminiscences of past glories.

There are so many bittersweet moments in the film: Giuseppe Manachini proudly displaying his worn costumes that spark his memory; Sara Scuderi raptly listening to a 1940's recording of herself as Tosca; Giovanni Puligheddu proffering his musical credentials; Leonida Bellon encountering Scuderi in a hallway and launching into Act II of Tosca, in the end receiving "il bacio di Tosca". The Casa Verdi staff, happily and humorously, treat these histrionics as normal behavior.

Shamefully, I know nothing about any of these musicians who shared the stage with such giants as Callas, Gigli, and Simionato, but you only have to witness Scuderi's snatches of Vissi d'arte, in a remarkably preserved voice, to realize the individuality and personality of her Tosca - and that she is no "povera donna, sola, abbandonata in questo popoloso deserto"; Floria is always with her. Maybe not a bad retirement after all.

A warm, bitter-sweet documentary. You have to watch it if you are a singer, you should watch it if you wish to understand what being a singer is about.
This Masterpiece doesn't ignore the difficulties and eccentricities of the inhabitants of this old musicians' home but it shows them with a lot of respect and love.
You will have to shed a tear at moments, laugh in amazement at others.
The extras are good as well: an interesting interview with the director and audio tracks from a 1948 recording of one of the main characters.
Highly recommended!

Who wants to see a film about old people? asks director Daniel Schmid in a special feature to the DVD "Tosca's Kiss" on EMI label (7243 5 99785 9). Well, if those old people are retired opera stars living at the Casa Verdi, founded especially for them and those like them, you have a lovely 87-minute film that shows their daily lives, still devoted entirely to opera and sharing their memories. Also sharing their voices, many of which have lasted surprisingly well down through the years.


Chief among the old-timers at the foundation is soprano Sara Scuderi, sort of a queen bee as it seems, whose presence ties the film together. Anyone interested in opera MUST see this, anyone who simply likes to watch senior citizens refusing to go gently into that good night should see this.


I read on the back that there are three CD tracks and some DVD-ROM features--most annoying to those without personal computers and those with them but without the required programs-but I could not bring up either of them after having some Adobe Acrobat software and some DVD-reading hardware installed at great expense. A bad direction for companies to take just to save some paper. But even without those elusive extras, this film is certainly worth the seeing.

The director Daniel Schmid created, with much discretion and sensitivity,an insightful,life-affirming documentary. The place is Casa Verdi,in Milan, a home for retired opera singers and musicians, founded by Guiseppe Verdi.The inhabitants still live in the stage modus. They relive and resing their pasts. It depicts how life in the end takes away, the world has become smaller; at the same time it teaches us how rich it can be when one has an inner wealth. The film is bittersweet and uplifting, a rare gem.

Schmid has given us a tribute to operatic musicians of yesteryear and to the great composer Verdi himself, who graciously provided the retirement home where they they would be able to live out their final years. Potent and eccentric personalities abound in this film, but you can't help but be touched by their warmth, candor and catty humor as they recall their careers in the operatic world of some 60-70 years ago, and by their frailty as their aging bodies and voices no longer serve them as they once did. Several also express their displeasure with the current state of opera, and we would do well to note and learn from their observations. These singers paid their dues and were artists and stars in their day, and that required dedication, hard work and commitment to their art. Soprano Sara Scuderi is the central singer in this cast, and she possesses an endearing, almost girlish charm when she reminisces about her great career and when she sings, in a voice still beautiful more than forty years after she retired. Those looking for fast-paced entertainment will probably find this film slow and plodding, but for those who will gear down and allow this movie to reveal its riches, you will not be disappointed. This film is a gem.

Unforgettable! Opera lovers and newcomers alike will appreciate the profound humanity of this documentary. Set in the Milanese retirement home for Italian musicians that was founded and funded by the composer, Giuseppe Verdi, we are drawn immediately into the recollections, the nostalgia, and the surprising vitality of these former performers. Their love for their art has not lessened in the least, even as their ability to serve it has been touchingly diminished. An extraordinarily intimate look at aging bodies and timeless passion. (I've shared brief scenes from this in opera outreach presentations, and attendees have wept, laughed, and burst into spontaneous applause!)

So glad I was finally able to purchase this at a price I could afford. The premise is certainly unique: a retirement home for opera stars. And while they may not be on stage, they are still performing!

The best scene for me was watching a duet and when the tenor died, he sank to the floor and laid there, playing dead, while the soprano sang and sang. From below camera range you hear him ask, "Can I get up now?" and she quickly hisses "No!" and keeps on singing. And he stays down!

It's inspiring to see that, no matter what, these people are still vital and enthusiastic and entertained by the music they worked with all their lives.

People are the strangest animals! When you watch this movie, you can't help but admire them!

This is the Best Documentary I have seen in Years!!! The people in it were some of the best Opera Singers of the 20th Century. They are all past on now. They were from a time when Opera was in it's golden age. We will never see artist of such high caliber again. This film will be an Asset and Treasure to anyone's film Library.

Not many documentaries survive 25 years. I saw this when it came out in 1984 and I never forgot it. It is a visit to la casa Verdi, the house for retired opera singers created by Verdi in Milan. What do you do, how do you live when you are a retired artist, when you have been singing all around the world, and now you are just very old in a retirement home?
La casa Verdi lived of the rights of Verdi's compositions, but Verdi is in the public domain now, the house survives on charity.
The director of the movie, Daniel Schmid, says the movie was a hard sell: indeed not many people are interested in the opera, and nobody is interested in old people.
It is, however, moving to see these very old people, some of them hardly walking, sing and discuss singers ("it is impossible to find a good Othello any more"), and show the costumes of their time of glory. They still have a voice. They still vibrate from that unique love of music. It is a rarefied unique world, yet extraordinary human.
If it is who we are and how we die, then we have done good, we humans.
Shed a tear, here comes Tosca's kiss and her last bow.