Stage Director Martha Collins created tight and believable dramatic acting. Ricardo Lugo was an excellent and amusing Sacristan while George Ross Somerville and Eric Lindsey were suitably stern cops serving Scarpia. Stentorian and effortful attention to that part of his range did not suit him well, especially in the final moments before his “execution.”Īs Angelotti, Young Bok Kim seemed an odd choice, giving his small role a distracting twist. Unfortunately, the Cavaradossi, Rafael Davila, belongs to the school of hit-the-high-notes tenors, whose emphasis on those elements dilutes the dramatic impact of his singing and the power of the drama. Her portrayal was both musically and dramatically compelling, incorporating flirtatious jealousy and deep anguish.īaron Scarpia, the sexy villain, brought compelling vocalism and cynical desire to life in the interpretation of Mark Walter, whose agonized death was a good example of the dramatic power of the inevitable. Gordon) and dramatic lighting (Ken Yunker), accompanied by a fine orchestra under the direction of Victor DeRenzi, who shaped the fluid lines of Puccini’s music with his habitual skill and sensitivity to the singers, qualities essential to this complex score.įloria Tosca was very well sung and, of equal importance, very well acted by Kara Shay Thomson, who also sang the demanding role in the 2009 revival of this excellent production, first presented in 2004. This is one of the best productions to be found anywhere, luxuriating in beautiful sets (David P. The Sarasota Opera opens its 2015 winter season with Puccini's 'Tosca.' / Photo by Richard Termine Although this outcome is inevitable, it always causes sharp intakes of breath throughout the audience, including the writer, who has seen this opera many times. Inevitably, but shockingly, the firing squad fires real bullets, killing Cavaradossi and leading to Tosca’s leap to her death from the battlements of Castel Sant’Angelo. Prior to this grisly moment, Tosca reflects on her life in the famous aria, “Vissi d’arte” (I Lived for Art), listing her good deeds and regretting the jealousy that has brought her to this terrible moment, when she must try to save Cavaradossi by concealing his role in sheltering an escaped political prisoner, Cesare Angelotti.īelieving Scarpia’s promise that Cavaradossi’s execution will be a fake, she finds Scarpia’s signed document providing the couple an escape from Italy and coaches Cavaradossi in the fine theatrical points of seeming to die. The cynical would-be lover, Chief of Police Baron Scarpia, uses this ghastly situation to propose a sexual liaison with Tosca in trade for the life of Cavaradossi, an attempt that eventually leads Tosca to stab him to death, crying out that this is the man before whom all Rome once trembled. The second act of Puccini’s opera proves just that, as the singer Floria Tosca is trapped by a cruel and powerful admirer while her lover, Mario Cavaradossi, is being tortured in the next room. One of the elements defining a “masterpiece” is the way in which a dramatic moment you know is coming nevertheless astonishes you every time it does.

Puccini opera floria