United States Puccini, Tosca: Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of Lyric Opera of Chicago / Eun Sun Kim (conductor). Civic Opera House, Chicago, 18.3.2022. (JLZ)
Production:
Director – Louisa Muller
Sets – Jean-Pierre Ponnelle
Lighting – Duane Schuler
Costumes – Marcel Escoffier
Chorus Master – Michael Black
Cast:
Floria Tosca – Michelle Bradley
Mario Cavaradossi – Russell Thomas
Baron Scarpia – Fabián Veloz
Spoletta – Rodell Rosel
Sacristan – Alan Higgs
Angelotti – Rivers Hawkins
Sciarrone – Anthony Reed
Jailer – Leroy Davis
Shepherd – Liam Brandfonbrener
After a hiatus of several months, it is a pleasure to have the Lyric Opera’s 2021/2022 season resume with Puccini’s Tosca. Louisa Muller directs this production which makes use of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s sumptuous sets to bring the audience to Tosca’s Rome.
Soprano Michelle Bradley made her debut here in the part of Tosca. Bradley recently sang Liù in a gala performance of Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera, and brought a polished style to this earlier Puccini opera. Her vibrant sound set her Tosca apart, and her even range and resonant tone were compelling. These qualities were evident from the start, particularly the first-act ‘Perchè chiuso?’ with tenor Russell Thomas as Cavaradossi, where the two discuss an anonymous woman in a Mary Magdalene painting. The image of the Marchesa Attavanti now enters the plot, and Tosca’s mistaking her for Cavaradossi’s lover sets the tragedy in motion. The diction of Tosca’s lines is key to the performance, and on this evening some of the diction was lost in the blocking. Even so, the emotions that Puccini translated into musical lines emerged easily for Bradley as the audience made their acquaintance with her Tosca.
With Scarpia’s entrance, Bradley gave further musical definition to the part in remarkable piano passages that rang in the hall when she responded to Scarpia’s attempts to engage her. Similar subtleties were essential in Act II, where Tosca showed her conflicting emotions as she learned more details about Cavaradossi’s torture and, eventually, succumbed to Scarpia’s interrogation. She saves her lover temporarily by revealing the information that the prisoner would not share. In response to Tosca’s forced complicity, the familiar ‘Vissi d’arte’ reveals her thoughts when caught between the idealism of art and the harsh realities she suddenly faces. In her interpretation, Bradley gave the aria fresh meaning: her sudden piano passages drew the audience into the music and deserved the extended applause that followed.
It was good to see Bradley’s gestures in the following scene, her eyes darting around the room to find some way to respond to the assent she gave to Scarpia. The lines preceding the fatal kiss that Tosca gives Scarpia were sufficiently clear, but the ones that followed needed more time in the orchestra. Here the orchestra’s tempos were somewhat at odds with Bradley’s performance, something that emerged moments later when the orchestra should have allowed more time for Tosca’s epitaph about the fall of the man who had all Rome trembling at his feet.
In the final act, Bradley brought Tosca’s hope and excitement to life. Her ringing tones in the duet ‘Amoro sol per te m’era morire’ showed more of her engaging voice. It was hard not to watch Bradley as she waited for the putatively fake execution and follow her to the battlement where she threw herself to her death. That powerful stage gesture capped an outstanding performance and won the audience’s admiration.
Tenor Russell Thomas as Cavaradossi was appealing from the start, with full, round tones that drew one in. The opening scenes of the first act gave audiences the opportunity to hear Thomas’s talent, including the exchange with Bradley’s Tosca. The two worked well together – each responded with similar intensity. Thomas’s finest moments in the second act built to the intensity that culminates in Cavaradossi’s exclamations of ‘Victory’ to spite Scarpia. In Act III, Thomas gave a fine reading of ‘E lucevan le stelle’, the iconic tenor aria, as he recreated the image of Tosca before the tragic dénouement. His subdued rendering of some lines in his final duet with Tosca invite rethinking – one wants to hear his rich voice to the very end.
The role of Scarpia is a challenge for any performer, and Fabián Veloz gave a fine reading. One of his best moments came in the Act I soliloquy, ‘Va, Tosca!’, which gave a sense of the ensuing pursuit of Tosca and his revenge on Cavaradossi. Some of the tempos did not serve Scarpia well, and this detail emerged elsewhere.
The reading by conductor Eun Sun Kim was generally solid, but sometimes failed to allow the singers to deliver their lines idiomatically. The pacing of the final section of the Act I ‘Te Deum’ needed to build in intensity to set up the conclusion of this scene. The ‘Te Deum’ is not a gratuitous detail in Tosca: it reinforces the text, which includes Tosca’s references to the deity and culminates in the lines before her suicidal leap that she will see Scarpia before God. While Act I moved rather quickly to its close, the end of Act III was effective and powerful. With a well-directed production like this one, the catharsis implicit in the score should take the audience to Tosca’s Rome as her tragic ending emerges as a triumph of spirit through Puccini’s enduring setting of Sardou’s drama. Because of the efforts of Lyric Opera’s team, especially soprano Michelle Bradley, this is a strong production that warrants attention.
James L. Zychowicz