So I recently attended a live screening from the Metropolitan Opera of Tosca, mainly due to its use in Quantum of Solace. Even though we see maybe a minute of the actual performance of Tosca in QoS, the music used in that scene is very memorable and when I finally saw Tosca, I could easily recognize familiar music. Additionally, I don’t know if this was intentional, but its use in QoS is very appropriate, as it is about a woman being given a difficult choice of saving her lover or doing something terrible, just like Vesper. I rewatched the scene in QoS after coming back from seeing Tosca and I have to say, they had some very odd staging in Bregenz, with the giant eyeball, compared to the staging at the Met.
It’s one of my favourite scenes in the whole franchise - particularly the latter half; coming face to face with Green and the restaurant shoot out with the ‘actuality audio’ cut out.
Another one of my favourite scenes is in Spectre when Bond saves Monica Bellucci from the 2 hitmen. Again, as well as great Direction, Staging, photography and acting it’s the use of Opera that really elevates this scene.
Both these scenes have a wonderfully visceral quality that only Film can deliver. Too much filmmaking is an exercise in directors expositing the script with dialogue. But great filmmakers (and great scripts) do it without dialogue; ‘show, don’t tell’.
I’d never have imagined that opera would fit so well with Bond, so bravo to those whom saw the potential.
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To give credit when it’s due - Alfred Hitchcock and The Man Who Knew Too Much Royal Albert Hall scene.
Somewhere in heaven Hitch is saying “been there, done that, got the tee shirt.”
The Tee but not the award…