Tosca, San Francisco Opera, Nov. 18 2012

It’s “dueling Toscas” in San Francisco. There will be a total of 12 performances, half of them with Angela Gheorghiu and half of them with Patricia Racette, each of them with her own Cavaradossi and Scarpia. This page reports on Angela Gheorghiu; I have yet to see the Patrica Racette cast.

The current production dates from 1997, which itself was intended to echo the set of the Tosca that opened the War Memorial Opera House in 1932. As such it was a perfectly traditional set, even looking as though it had been used a few times and somewhat faded with age. The first act, in the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, looked like an Italian church whose walls were covered with faded frescoes. To the right were two chapels with locked steel bars, and the requisite statue of the Madonna was just outside them. To the left was a wooden platform with stairs and guard rails where the artist Cavaradossi could stand to work on his painting of Mary Magdalene. Partway upstage was the nave of the church, with another recess behind it.

Scarpia’s office in act two had everything that you would expect: to the left, an open window through which the music of the floor below could be heard; Scarpia’s desk; in the middle of the stage, the sofa on which Scarpia intends to have his way with Tosca; to the right, Scarpia’s dining table and the door to the torture chamber. The surprising element was the male nudes painted on the square columns that supported the ceiling of the office.

In act three we saw the topmost level of the Castel Sant’Angelo, a flat plaza with walls to the left and right, and stone stairs rising a few feet to the parapet from which Tosca took her final leap. Just to the left of the parapet was a statue of St. Michael Archangel drawing his sword. On the back wall was a painting of the Roman skyline, dominated by the dome of St. Peter’s, with smaller domes in front of it. Since act three begins at 4:00 am, the sky was a deep blue with stars twinkling in it; as the act progressed, the stars faded, the blue lightened, and rosy hues of sunrise appeared. Gheorghiu as Tosca took a proper swan dive from the parapet.

Our cast:
Floria Tosca: Angela Gheorghiu
Mario Cavaradossi: Massimo Giordano
Baron Scarpia: Roberto Frontali
Angelotti: Christian Van Horn
Spoletta: Joel Sorensen    
Sacristan: Dale Travis    
Sciarrone: Ao Li    
Jailer: Ryan Kuster
Shepherd Boy: Etienne Julius Valdez
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Director: Jose Maria Condemi    
Production Designer: Thierry Bosquet

This was Angela Gheorghiu’s second Tosca of the current run. Her first had been cut short after the first act due to an intestinal upset, and her cover Melody Moore performed acts two and three to rave reviews. I wish I had seen that performance—this afternoon Gheorghiu sang adequately, but not up to the level of her “Vissi d’Arte” on YouTube. Giordano also made an adequate Cavaradossi, although his “E lucevan le stelle” in the third act drew no applause whatsoever. Frontali’s Scarpia was my favorite of the three principals. Van Horn sounded wonderful in the small part of Angelotti. I had seen Dale Travis as the sacristan three months ago in Santa Fe; his overacting had been toned down a lot. The entire effect came up somewhat short of my expectations, somewhat short of a beta. I’ll go again, but only because the Patricia Racette cast has gotten outstanding reviews: “What a difference change in principals can make!” I’ll go see for myself.