SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Puccini,  Tosca : Seattle Opera, Soloists, cond. Vjekoslav Sutej, dir. Chris Alexander, set designer Thierry Bosquet, costume designer Andrew, Marlay lighting designer Connie Yun, Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, Seattle, 24 and 27.2. 2008 (BJ)

 Lisa Daltirus (Tosca) and Frank Porretta (Cavaradossi) Cast One

Though it has been a resounding success with the public since its premiere in 1900, Tosca has aroused much controversy among critics. Some regard this Puccinian excursion into the realm of operatic verismo as a masterpiece of musical drama. Others find its emphasis on sex and violence distasteful. The American musicologist Joseph Kerman, in his book Opera as Drama, went so far as to dub it a “shabby little shocker,” and the phrase has caught on and found favor in certain circles. Even Charles Osborne, who devoted a whole book to Puccini’s operas and must therefore be presumed to harbor some enthusiasm for the composer, described the torture scene in Act II as “musical quasi-pornography.”

Critics, it would seem, repeatedly fall victim to the sway of the double standard. You can see it at work in the differing critical response to stylistic fingerprints in an intellectually okay composer like Webern and an intellectually un-okay composer like Shostakovich–Webern is lauded for “developing a powerfully individual language,” Shostakovich is reviled for “repeating himself.” Surely it is a similar duplicity of judgment that must be suspected when the vivid portrayal of tyranny, sadism, and sexual exploitation at their sickening work is deemed quasi-pornographic in the suspectly popular Puccini but hailed as profound human compassion when we encounter it in the operas of another okay composer, Alban Berg.

Let us dispense with the double standard. Let us recognize Tosca for what it is, which is as compelling a case-study in man’s inhumanity to man–and woman–as any to be found in the operatic literature. Its impact, moreover, depends at least as much on Puccini’s musical dramatism as on the characters and situations he and his librettists took from Victorien Sardou’s play. For the eloquence of one musical phrase can often tell us more about what a human being is thinking and feeling than can be elucidated in a thousand words–which is the source of opera’s fascination in the first place.

Greer Grimsley (Scarpia) and Lisa  Lisa Daltirus (Tosca) Cast One

Don’t underestimate Puccini’s characters, either. They are real people with jobs and interests in the world, unlike the conventional operatic tenor and soprano who, in George Bernard Shaw’s withering phrase, really have nothing to do but “repeatedly call attention to the fact that at last they meet again.” Cavaradossi is a painter, and a dedicated political reformer too. His “Vittoria! Vittoria!” in Act II, when news is brought of Napoleon’s triumph over the Austrians at Marengo, is just one among many examples of a complex of concerns that go far beyond his passion for Tosca, and often conflict with it. Tosca herself is not just some eminent person’s daughter, but an opera singer in her own right, and a thoroughly convincing one. In this respect they resemble, say, the Yves Montand and Simone Signoret characters in the film La Guerre est finie, who are lovers and people too, rather than the fluffier lovers-and-nothing-but of many an operatic potboiler. And it must be hard, if you actually listen to their duets with due attention to what they are saying, not to be both charmed and touched by what comes across as a very real relationship between two real people, a relationship compounded of sensuality, respect, jealousy, forbearance, intellectual sympathy, and a beguiling touch of light humor. Sometimes it is the words that give the clue to all these traits, but at least as often it is the music that carries the burden of characterization.

So much regarding the work–and now I am delighted to report that Seattle Opera’s new production is worthy of it. Here–praise be!–is a director who is actually willing to present an opera as the work its creators actually wrote, rather than as some quite different one that he wishes they had written. There is nothing remotely unconventional, or “Modern,” about Chris Alexander’s staging. The characters are all recognizable human beings, and their behavior from start to finish is exactly what their natures dictate. Nobody, believe it or not, stands on a chair, that most egregious cliché of contemporary directorial “thinking.” The only notable departure from the score’s instructions came at the end of Act II, when Tosca did not close the door when she left the stage after killing Scarpia–but I must confess that the sight of her standing illuminated in the doorway, looking back on the gruesome scene, was most effective. Everything about this production works to perfection, in a physical setting (scenery from the San Francisco Opera, costumes originally created for the New York City Opera, lighting design homegrown) that is sumptuous to look at and serves the needs of the drama impeccably. Here–praise be again!–is a set designer who can understand Italian, and who sees no reason, when the stage directions tell him that the Attavanti chapel is on the right and the painter’s scaffolding on the left, to up and put them somewhere else. The physical execution, too, of Thierry Bosquet’s conception, presenting us in turn with the interior of the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, Scarpia’s room in the Palazzo Farnese, and the terrace of the Castel Sant’Angelo, with St. Peter’s and the Vatican in the background, is done with skill and taste, as are Andrew Marlay’s stylish costumes and Connie Yun’s subtly modulated lighting.

Michele Capalbo (Tosca) Cast Two

It helps that the persons of the drama are represented, for the most part, by singing actors who can both sing and act. As is customary at the Seattle Opera, the principal roles are taken by alternating casts. I went to see the production twice, in order to see all the performers concerned, but unfortunately, in the first Sunday matinee, the highly-regarded young tenor in what must be called the second cast was forced by a respiratory infection to drop out after Act I. It says much for the spirit of this company that the first-line Cavaradossi, Frank Porretta, agreed to step in for the rest of this matinee, though that meant he was on stage again less than 17 hours after finishing opening night.

Porretta, it has to be said, was perhaps the least convincing of the principals in either cast from a dramatic point of view–he did rather a lot of conventional operatic staggering about–but there was no doubting his involvement in the role. The two sopranos I saw and heard both acted splendidly, though in quite different ways. Tosca was, as it happens, the first opera I saw when I first came to the United States in 1964: it was performed at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, with the great Renata Tebaldi in the title role. She sang marvelously, but I shall never forget the sight of Tosca, when the man she supposedly loves was dragged on in Act II after being tortured, carefully moving her skirt out of the way so that it shouldn’t be stepped on. Nothing remotely like that was perpetrated either by Michele Capalbo or by Lisa Daltirus, who were both making their company debuts as the two Toscas in this production. Capalbo was a charming figure on stage, and totally believable in her realization of the character’s suffering. But when the first-line Tosca, Lisa Daltirus, made her appearance, a crucial difference became apparent. Both of these sopranos have the advantage of looking lovely, but where Capalbo offered the portrait of a charming little woman, Daltirus showed us the authentic diva that Tosca surely must be. Scarpia is a less complex personage, who was represented admirably both by Gary Simpson in the matinee cast and by local favorite Greer Grimsley, who showed us at once the evil in the character and his poisonous charm, without quite matching the unforgettable subtlety Tito Gobbi brought to the role, and the supporting characters, played by the same artists in both casts, were all pointedly sketched in.

Steven Cole (Spoletta) and Gary Simpson (Scarpia) Cast Two

Musically, meanwhile, the total effect was almost as good. The orchestra played with fire, precision, and often seductive tone under the leadership of Vjekoslav Sutej, who moreover paced the score to a nicety, though from my point of view this otherwise admirable conductor provoked complaint in several respects. He cut the two measures, after “Vissi d’arte,” in which Scarpia asks Tosca if she has made up her mind and she asks if he wants her on her knees at his feet–yes, I know this senseless cut is almost always made, and even figures in the famous and unrivaled recording with Callas conducted by Victor de Sabata, but that is no excuse. He encouraged the audience to interrupt the drama by very visibly applauding the singers after several arias–yes, I know clapping after arias is also traditional, but again I find it a nonsense. (Try to imagine a theater audience breaking into applause when Hamlet finishes his “To be or not to be” soliloquy!). And, most importantly, he permitted altogether too much loud singing, and even necessitated it by letting the orchestra play too loudly in the first place. The most glaring instance of this came in Cavaradossi’s “Recondita armonia.” The voice part in this aria is marked by turns piano and pianissimo; the orchestra is directed to play “pp e dolcissimo”; but singer and orchestra alike gave us a hearty forte. It was, I should add, only Porretta among the principals who hardly ever abandoned the upper levels of dynamic force. Lisa Daltirus, in particular, achieved some wonderful dynamic contrasts, her gorgeous and flawlessly projected voice demonstrating a capacity to draw thrilling crescendos from notes initially floated with bewitching delicacy. For her part, Michele Capalbo seemed to me to be in some vocal difficulty throughout the performance I heard from her; she possesses a voice of considerable beauty, but her line was never quite focused. As Scarpia, Gary Simpson and Greer Grimsley were both in fine voice, even if Grimsley, commanding artist though he is, had better beware of a certain hardness–a lack of amplitude around the sound–that made his singing on this occasion a shade constricted in effect.

Among the smaller roles, there was not one weak link. Peter Strummer made an entertaining Sacristan. As Spoletta, Sciarrone, and an outrageously venal Jailer, Steven Cole, Barry Johnson, and Byron Ellis constituted a chilling trio of petty villains of the kind a grand villain like Scarpia depends on to do his dirty work, and Jason Grant’s Angelotti vividly revealed the terror such a machinery of oppression grinds into its victims. With the Shepherd Boy’s song at the start of Act III, David Korn’s unusual and lovely mature male soprano voice offset the prevailing sense of foreboding with a few precious moments of heaven-sent lyricism, and the chorus as usual showed the effects of Beth Kirchhoff’s skilled training. I would not wish any of my strictures to detract from the impact of what I intend as a highly enthusiastic review. Let me put it this way: this was a superb Tosca–in many respects a great Tosca; when a production is this good, you want it to be even better, to have no weak points at all. But that is a standard rarely achieved in the complex world of opera. If you never see and hear a better production that this one, you may die happy, and operatically well satisfied.

Bernard Jacobson

Pictures © Rozarii Lynch or Bill Mohn


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