In Puccini’s Tosca, Pacific Opera Victoria finds an über-dramatic note to end its season on. If you like your opera straight up (read: full of deceit, bloodshed and big arias) get thee to the Royal for Amiel Gladstone’s sharp but classic staging of a bonafide operatic thriller.
A perennial favourite for purists, Tosca leaves no thematic stone unturned in its swift 2.5 hour run: religion, revolution, betrayal, murder, a love triangle and a bit of smut all play a role here amongst one of Puccini’s most popular scores (grand tunes including Act I’s ‘Recondita harmonia’ and Act III’s ‘E lucevan le stelle’ are performed in top form under composer Giuseppe Pietraroua’s deft hand). The action opens inside a Roman duomo-in-progress, the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, where the painter Cavaradossi (tenor Luc Robert) is working on a portrait of Mary Magdalene and waxing poetic about his love for Floria Tosca (soprano Joni Henson), the habitually jealous and ill-fated opera diva for which this piece is named.
Act I introduces us to all the main players and the political situation du jour: Italy has been invaded by Napoleon Bonaparte and former consuls of the Roman Republic are on the run, including political prisoner Cesare Angelotti (bass baritone Alexandre Sylvestre) whom Cavaradossi agrees to hide from the police chief Scarpia (baritone David John Pike, in his POV debut). One of opera’s smarmiest villains, Scarpia is on the hunt for both Angelotti and a spot in the bed of fair Tosca. He’s the Iago to Tosca’s Othello, curating jealousy among lovers and setting the tone for the violence to come—easy to hate, yes, but everyone in Tosca has their secrets and the inherent drama in this piece ratchets right along at a quick clip until its tragic finale.
Both Henson and Robert are outstanding in their respective arias—properly gilded with unabashed passion and heartbreak in turn. Pike rounds out the central trio on an even vocal footing, radiating strength and broody resolve instead of the madcap sadism that would no doubt be an easier laurel to rest on in this role. Henson’s Tosca was right on point as a cheeky, somewhat-domineering lover in the first act but I believed her vulnerability less than I should have under Scarpia’s repulsive advances in Act II. Maybe it’s that the joy then betrayal then heartbreak in Tosca’s story culminates too quickly—or maybe Gladstone’s direction should have better drawn out the diva’s fear and rage and devastation to keep me on the edge of my seat. Luckily, the music in Puccini’s hypnotic score did this work instead—complementing the interplay between good and evil with exquisitely layered counter-melodies and carrying much of the piece’s intensity forward to the final bar. Inventive in its scoring, Tosca gives brilliant musical profile to a number of character-specific motifs that lead the action and seamlessly weave Puccini’s work together—a challenge that both Pietraroia and the Victoria Symphony basked in on opening night.
This by-the-book incarnation of Tosca is pure melodrama and, as such, is both a crowd-pleaser for theatre veterans and a powerful introduction to capital ‘O’ opera for the junior fans among us—bravo to POV for ending the season on such a high note.
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