Critic Reviews

• John von Rhein, Chicago Tribune

  You would be better off investing in the worthy EMI recording that serves as the soundtrack, or the home video of the 1992 Malfitano-Domingo production.

• Melinda Bargreen, Seattle Times

  With three excellent principal singers, a youthful and good-looking diva and tenor and richly handsome locations, it's enough to make you wish Jacquot had left well enough alone and just filmed the opera without all these distortions of perspective.

• Steven Rosen, Denver Post

  For movie lovers as well as opera lovers, Tosca is a real treat.

• Robert Denerstein, Denver Rocky Mountain News

  From the trembling fury of Gheorgiu's Tosca to the penetrating stare of Raimondi's Scarpia, this Tosca blazes with passion. At its best, it's sublime.

• Marta Barber, Miami Herald

  Jacquot's Tosca is a treat.

• , Boston Globe

  It is impossible to imagine wanting to see Jacquot's film more than once, if that.

• Cole Smithey, ColeSmithey.com

  Benoit Jacquot ("School of Flesh") directs this stylistically challenging cinematic rendering of Giacomo Puccini's famous 1899 opera with an appropriately powerful performance by opera diva Angela Gheorgiu.

• , Seattle Post-Intelligencer

  The performance is curiously cold, surprisingly artificial and removed from the very passion embedded deeply within the score and libretto.

• Phil Villarreal, Arizona Daily Star

  Definitely not a movie for everyone, but should please fans of the classic opera.

• T. Hashimoto, San Francisco Examiner

  If you can read the subtitles (the opera is sung in Italian) and you like 'Masterpiece Theatre' type costumes, you'll enjoy this movie.

• Cherryl Dawson and Leigh Ann Palone, TheMovieChicks.com

  Passion, lip-synching, tragedy, and lots of really really high notes. For me, this opera isn't a favorite, so it's a long time before the fat lady sings.

• Georgia Rowe, Contra Costa Times

  The director sees the strengths of Alagna and Gheorghiu and plays them for every cinematic moment.

Read all 12 critic reviews