What’s more elemental in opera than a grand tale of lust, love, murder, and suicide? Tosca (1900), Giacomo Puccini’s international smash hit after his previous international smash La bohème, roars onto the stage like a juggernaut. Simple in plot, employing only three principle roles, it is the epitome of verismo, the shocking genre that kicked the romantics right out of the theater. Gritty, downtown, and titillating, it shoved “real life” directly in the audience’s face. Just this side of melodrama, this adaptation of Sardou’s play from the Italian master librettists Giacoso and Illica is compact, no frills, and runs on the highest octane of all, Puccini’s sublime melodies. Toxic masculinity has never sounded so good nor portrayed with such abandon and excitement.
Thanks to the basest of all opera villains, Rome’s chief of police Scarpia (baritone Brad Noffsinger-Morrison) is vile in the extreme, more vicious than Caligula, a sensual sadist who uses sex as a weapon, and gets away with his thuggery until he meets opera diva Tosca (soprano Kathryn Frady). He falls in lust which will prove his undoing.
Petty and jealous, Tosca loves painter Caravadossi (tenor Jonny Kaufman). He’s a budding revolutionist and hides the escaped Angelotti (bass-baritone Christopher Besch) fleeeing Sarpia’s henchmen. When Scarpia sees Tosca at the cathedral, his libido goes into overdrive. In one of opera’s great Act I endings, he blasts his illicit desires against the thunderous processional “Te Deum.” “Go, Tosca,” he bellows in expectant conquest as the church choir exalts the glory of God. The irony is both shocking and delicious.
While Caravadossi is being tortured within earshot, Scarpia coolly offers Tosca a choice. Have sex with me and I’ll spare your lover’s life. Simple, no? Thrown on the divan, she asks God why He allows such debasement. This, of course, is the world-famous aria, “Vissi, d’arte” (I lived for art), a touchstone for any soprano. She bargains with Scarpia. Yes, I’ll do what you want, but let me and my lover go free afterward. He agrees with a caveat. He can’t pardon such a guilty political prisoner, but he’ll arrange a mock execution. Tearfully, she acquiesces. As he approaches for the heated embrace, Tosca stabs him with his dinner knife. Here is Tosca’s kiss, she hisses. He dies in an overlay of red lighting.
Of course, Scarpia has lied. The bullets are real. Caravadossi lies dead, Scarpia’s men rush to arrest Tosca, and she jumps to her death from the parapets of Castel Sant’Angelo, cursing the monster.
I think it was G.B. Shaw in his review who described Tosca as a shabby little shocker. But even he had to agree that Puccini’s powerful music overcame any objection to the rushing story line. There’s no filler, no fat, just juicy theater. Compact and tightly wound. The set arias are few: “Vissi d’arte” for soprano; two stellar arias for tenor, “Recondita harmonia” (Strange harmony) and the heart-breaking “E lucevan le stelle” (The stars were shining); a short Credo-like anthem for baritone Scarpia. The chorus is used only in the cathedral act, and the Shepherd Boy’s (soprano Yuiba Shin) folk song is almost a throwaway. But Puccini’s music rushes forward with magical passages of sung dialogue swirling under his patented chromaticism, sparkling orchestration, and ultra-lush melody.
Commanding the pared-down OH orchestra, maestro Andy Anderson favored a sluggish tempo instead of a more agreeable pell-mell pace, but the climaxes were thrilling and he drew lovely playing from the strings, horns, and an especially flavorful clarinet and percussion. For an unfathomable reason, director Matt Haney set the opera in the ‘60s, so Caravadossi sports electric bellbottoms, Tosca wears a silky pants suit, and Scarpia is a Mafia don in sunglasses. This modernization adds nothing and looks like bad costuming, which it is. The set is undistinguished – three arches, the middle with an entrance door that wouldn’t stay open or doubled as the parapet when Tosca flings herself outward. The entire look was threadbare and penny-pinched.
The singers were good dramatic actors, but everyone sang at the highest possible volume as if performing in the Hippodrome. Kaufman has the most powerful voice I’ve heard this season. He hits all his high notes without effort and his voice has a mellow masculine quality which is quite fetching, but he constantly projects without differentiation whether sighing in love or proclaiming “Vittoria!” to spite Scarpia. It gets a bit tiresome. The same with Frady and Noffsinger-Morrison. She possesses wondrous stage presence and her sound is clear and forthright, but it’s pitched to 11. Noffsinger-Morriosn turned blustery near the end, but he, too, has plenty of heft with dark, dark undertones that are quite attractive.
Tosca is not subtle. We don’t want it to be; it’s not meant to be. Full of intense passion, Puccini slathers on the gorgeous music to amp up the drama. It’s full of life’s shortcomings, awful twists of fate, and swoons of love that make grand drama. Only opera can do this.
Tosca. 2 p.m. Sunday, November 15; 7:30 p.m. Thursday, November 19; 7:30 Saturday, November 21. Opera in the Heights, 1703 Heights Boulevard. For information, call 713-861-5303 or visit operaintheheights.org. $45-$115.
