The Florentine’s Tosca

Noele Stollmack’s new, spartan set — a mostly bare, steeply raked stage, with one panel for projections — for the Florentine Opera‘s latest Tosca had its hits and misses. Mainly, it demonstrated how little difference a set makes for Puccini’s potboiler. With flocked wallpaper or with no walls at all, as we had at Friday evening, Tosca is an over-the-top melodrama about over-the-top singing.

The main problem with the design is the sharp angle of the rake. It is so steep that when the jailer put down his lantern in Act 3, it slid down the slope a couple of feet. Almost every cast member showed some tentative balance. Tenor Renzo Zulian, as Cavaradossi, was exceedingly careful on the ladder in the mural-painting scene in Act 1, and I don’t blame him. The whole thing was leaning toward the audience because of the uneven footing. The legs on that ladder should have been rebuilt longer on the downside. Zulian was clearly worried about it and so was I, and neither of us should have been thinking about that damned ladder while he was singing.

But the set did make for some wonderful stage pictures. The “Te Deum” procession, a solemn hesitation-step on the diagonal with a lane of lighted candles, was stunning. And two grates, suggesting a torture chamber below Scarpia’s lair, made for some striking blood-red light effects.

Stage director Dean Anthony used the wide-open playing space for an unusually physical and convincing stabbing scene between Cynthia Lawrence’s Tosca and Todd Thomas’ Scarpia. They threw themselves into Anthony’s well-conceived stage combat while singing. That’s not easy.

I wish Anthony had been just as realistic with the love duet in Act 3 for Lawrence and Zulian. The guy has been tortured and has spent the night in chains on a stone floor. You could play that scene out as if he barely has the strength to stand, which would have avoided the parade of clichéd clinches we saw Friday.

All three principals sang with the kind of spinto power that makes you feel the effort of singing. That is not especially to my taste, but it is part of the style of this opera. That sort of singing lays a sheen of heroism on the singers as much as the characters. It’s why Puccini operas get more standing ovations than Mozart operas.

Todd Thomas doesn’t have the sort of sustained, building aria that his colleagues have. The Scarpia role is all about a sustained, glowering intensity at any volume, and he nailed that. Vocally and dramatically, he played the corrupt baron as an out-and-out sociopath, which is better than the sensual, sadistic, bon vivant we’ve seen before at the Florentine.

I’ve always thought of Tosca as an overwrought bimbo, and Cynthia Lawrence did not change my view of the character. That said, she sang intelligently, with a particularly smart measuring of energy and intensity of “Vissi d’arte,” one of the greatest arias of all. I didn’t so much like her blaring way with crescendi or the brassy edge in her higher range. Better those flaws than timid singing, though; Tosca has to be in your face, and Lawrence was in  your face.

Zulian was fabulous. Like Lawrence, he built his big arias with a sure eye for their mountaintops. His clear, consistent, ringing tone and dead-eye pitch made his sound exciting. He is a natural Cavaradossi to begin with, and he has cultivated and refined his gift for the role.

It took conductor Joseph Rescigno and his singers about 20 minutes to get on the same wave length, but after that pacing and coordination were impeccable. The Milwaukee Symphony was in the pit and played very well. These days, they always do.

Puccini’s Tosca, sung in Italian with English supertitles, will be performed again at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at Marcus Center Uihlein Hall. For tickets, call the Marcus box office, 414-273-7206.

For a preview story on this production, click here.

Other reviews: Elaine Schmidt.