![Claudio Sgura as Scarpia and Chiara Taigi as Tosca [Photo courtesy of Palm Beach Opera]](http://www.operatoday.com/ToscaTaigiSgura.gif)
03 Apr 2011
Tosca, Palm Beach
Victorien Sardou wrote the melodrama La Tosca, a play subject to all sorts of incidental drama and off-stage intrigue, for Sarah Bernhardt.
Recently in Performances
Wozzeck at ENO
“Man is an abyss. It makes one dizzy to look into it.” So utters Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, repeating what was also a recurring motif in the playwright’s own letters.
Mulhouse: Rare Britten Well Done
National Opera Company of the Rhine has marked this year’s Benjamin Britten celebration with a remarkably compelling, often gripping new production of the seldom-seen Owen Wingrave.
Frankfurt's Intriguing Idomeneo
Once upon a time, Frankfurt Opera had the baddest ass reputation in Germany as “the” cutting edge producer of must-see opera.
Rigoletto at Lyric Opera of Chicago
Productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto can serve as a vehicle for individual singers to make a strong impression and become afterward associated with specific roles in the opera.
Britten Sinfonia with Ian Bostridge
Just in case we were not aware that the evening’s programme was ‘themed’, the Britten Sinfonia designed a visual accompaniment to their musical exploration of night, sleep and dreams.
Aida, Manitoba Opera
Poor Aida! She never seems to have anything go her way.
Superlative singing: Don Carlo, Royal Opera House
Is it possible to upstage Jonas Kaufmann? Kaufmann was brilliant in this Verdi Don Carlo at the Royal Opera House, London, but the rest of the cast was so good that he was but first among equals. Don Carlo is a vehicle for stars, but this time the stars were everyone on stage and in the pit. Even the solo arias, glorious as they are, grow organically out of perfect ensemble. This was a performance that brought out the true beauty of Verdi's music.
Sarah Connolly: French Song at Wigmore Hall
The big names were absent: Duparc, D’Indy, Debussy, Ravel … and while Fauré, Chausson, Roussel and several members of Les Six put in an appearance, in less than familiar guises, this survey of French song of the early 20th century and interwar years deliberately took us on a journey through infrequently travelled terrain.
Rare restoration: Handel’s Esther 1720
Composed between 1718 and 1720, Handel’s Esther is sometimes described as the ‘first English Oratorio’, but is in fact a hybrid form, mixing elements of oratorio, masque, pastoral and opera.
The Damnation of Faust, London
Hector Berlioz's légende dramatique, La Damnation de Faust, exists somewhere between cantata and opera. Berlioz's flexible attitude to dramatic form made the piece unworkable on the stages of early 19th century Paris and his music is so vivid that you wonder whether the piece needs staging at all.
Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert, St John's Smith Square
St. John’s Smith Square was the site of Elizabeth Connell’s final London concert, intended as a farewell to London on her moving to Australia. It was rendered ultimately final by her unexpected death.
Aida with all the Trimmings, Even a Blue Silk Elephant!
With the building of the Suez Canal, Egypt became more interesting to Western Europeans. Khedive Ismail Pasha wanted a hymn by Verdi for the opening of a new opera house in Cairo, but the composer said he did not write occasional pieces.
Die Zauberflöte, Royal Opera
Back for its fourth revival, David McVicar’s 2003 production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte has much charm, beauty and artistry.
The Marriage of Figaro Ends Season at Arizona Opera
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro has a libretto by Lorenzo daPonte based on the French play La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro (The Crazy Day or the Marriage of Figaro) by Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799).
Baden’s Flute Goes Barefoot in the Park
For its world class Easter Festival, Baden-Baden mounted a Die Zauberflöte that owed more to the grey penitential doldrums of Lent than to the unbridled jubilance of re-birth.
Bonjour M. Gauguin in Berkeley
Once Berkeley Opera, renamed West Edge Opera, this enterprising company offers the Bay Area’s only serious alternative to corporate opera, to wit Bonjour M. Gauguin.
Mahler Lieder, Wigmore Hall
In the first of pianist Julius Drake’s three-part series, ‘Perspectives’, our gaze was directed at Gustav Mahler’s eclectic musical responses to human experiences: from the trauma and distress of anguished love to the sweet contentment of true friendship, from the agonised introspection of the artist to the diverse dramas of human interaction.
Cinderella Goes to the Opera
The Los Angeles opera company marketed its spring production of Rossini's La Cenerentola as Cinderella though there is no opera by that name. The libretto of La Cenerentola is not the Cinderella story we know.
Die Walküre, Paris
The Paris Opéra has not staged a full Ring Cycle since 1957, but its current season will conclude with a correction of this grand operatic gap.
Manon Lescaut, Washington National Opera
Washington National’s 2012-2013 season continues this spring with a production of Giacomo Puccini’s first successful opera.
OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »
Performances
In a representative case of truth at least rivaling fiction, there were dime-novel circumstances revolving around the play even before “the most famous actress the world has ever known” took the stage, the first Floria Tosca.
For one thing, the whole of the thing was set under the specter of legal issues – another author claimed that Sardou had cribbed the story (those days in theater circles, this was not an altogether uncommon accusation). The show would go on. Bernhardt saw to this herself as partial financier; she rented the theater where the play would debut in 1887.
The plot twists further when Bernhardt learns Sardou made arrangements to have another actress play La Tosca in the stateside premiere. Bernhardt’s threats to desert probably rang hollow; she was overinvested; the theater and the man (her lover) playing Baron Scarpia were hers. Bernhardt’s eventual change of heart aligned her with a calamity of fate, one joined to Floria Tosca’s own. Touring the play in Brazil, she injured herself in performance and eventually lost a limb. La Tosca, as you know, in the hands of Giacomo Puccini, would become the opera Tosca.
There were no such fractures in Palm Beach Opera’s Tosca (seen March 25th). Breaks of the dramatic variety, however, did happen.
It is unclear whether Director Massimo Gasparon’s concepts or the execution of these were faulty. One thing is clear, the acting of the principals tended towards predictable and slack, and in some cases limited in scope. Scarpia’s assault on Tosca is a case in point – more like timid mud-wrestling, the two seemed unsure of how to go about taking the actions of their respective motivations.
The troublesome stage activities seeped into the music and into the pit. Maestro Bruno Aprea showed the bearings of a trooper; through tripped-up entrances and marred text, the conductor mouthed along with singers and kept the music flowing – slowly. What is more, the orchestra pulled out very rich timbres and evenly wound textures. This instrumental balance gave way to the most sprawling soundscapes in act one: for the entire scene of Angelotti’s reappearance and the soaring lines of the duet.
The chorus – prepared by Greg Ritchey – turned in a strong vocal performance in the “Te Deum” and some often over-shadowed musical bits were gleaned from Tosca’s recital.
There were moments when Chiara Taigli seemed miscast in the role of Tosca, her voice a hair light in the middle, with but a touch of steel at top. Her “Vissi d’arte” was labored as Aprea seemed to take things slower still. At the word “assassino” in the second act, Taigli’s stage manner turned more sure and the use of her hands in the final act duet was striking.
Tenor Riccardo Massi has had some important engagements overseas of late. As Cavaradossi here, Massi’s easy high notes complimented a weighted sound that sped through “E lucevan le stelle.” Massi demonstrated he could sing a legato line though there were few instances of him doing it.
Chiara Taigi as Tosca and Riccardo Massi as Cavaradossi
Claudio Sgura appeared to be taking cues from Tito Gobbi’s acting grab bag; the baritone mainly used his eyes to convey wickedness as Scarpia. Sgura’s singing was one-dimensional, an attractive dimension though it is.
Matteo Peirone returns to PBO as Il sagrestano, with a big moment corralling choir boys just before the “Te Deum.” Mathew Burns’ played a woozy Angelotti. Young Artist Evanivaldo Correa Serrano’s Spoletta was obliging to his master Scarpia. With a sharp turn and genuflection towards his liege, as Sciarrone Young Artist Kenneth Stavert’s actions were as if half-mocking Scarpia. Gasparon has the Shepherd Boy – on this night Young Artist Greta Ball, trying her darndest to sing out of vibrato – sitting on the ramparts of Castel Sant'Angelo and shooed away by guards after his paen to the morning.
PBO borrows these sets for Tosca from Sarasota Opera; they were created by Sarasota’s resident scenic designer David P. Gordon. Gordon’s take on Castel Sant'Angelo includes a backdrop (lit by Joseph R. Oshry) view of St. Peter’s Basilica and Vatican City.
Taigli’s suspenseful swinging of her cape before diving from Sant’Angelo’s parapets ended Tosca in better dramatic form than had been the night’s pattern. Incidentally, it was on this fall that Bernhardt shattered her right knee in La Tosca.
Robert Carreras