Soprano gives all as Tosca
Compared with the night before, when responsibility for the title role changed hands between the first two acts, Friday’s “Tosca” at the San Francisco Opera was a comparatively smooth undertaking. The only drama was the one being enacted, with plenty of verve and musical dynamism, on the stage of the War Memorial Opera House.
Now and then there’s something to be said for everything just going according to plan.
Leading the second cast in Puccini’s melodrama was soprano Patricia Racette, who has sung the title role elsewhere but never before in San Francisco, and she brought to it the same mixture of vocal intensity and dramatic fearlessness that informs her every performance.
As the resourceful
operatic diva who faces down political and sexual tyranny in a sudden burst of courage, Racette deployed a vein of rough-hewn but deeply expressive musical artistry. She was most effective in Act 2, as Tosca confronts the disruption of her carefree artistic life by forces more evil than anything her career has prepared her for.
With a vibrant stream of vocal tone backed by hairtrigger dramatic responsiveness, Racette gave musical expression to Tosca’s moment of crisis. She was heroic in her confrontation with the lecherous Baron Scarpia, tenderly reflective in the “Vissi d’arte” aria, and downright demonic in the act’s murderous climax.
Racette also brought charm and well-modulated coyness to the amorous byplay of Act 1, though she struggled a bit to maneuver the vocal writing there with complete grace. But her contribution to the final act — capped by a rather scary full-out swan dive off the roof of the Castel Sant’Angelo — lacked nothing in dramatic fervor.
Soprano Angela Gheorghiu, who pulled out of Thursday’s opening performance after one act with an intestinal flu, was recovered on Sunday and resumed the role for the matinee performance.
The ferocity of Racette’s performance was well matched by that of baritone Mark Delavan as Scarpia, in an interpretation that went well beyond cartoon impressions of lechery to hint at the dark obsessiveness informing the character’s behavior. In his extended soliloquy at the start of Act 2, Delavan let loose with superbly open-throated phrasing, as though Scarpia’s very compulsions were forcing their way into the open.
As the painter Cavaradossi, tenor Brian Jagde, a third-year Adler Fellow, gave a sympathetic but not always fully formed performance. He brought energy and ardor to the big arias in the outer acts — “Recondita armonia” in Act 1 was particularly fluent — but his husky, baritonal vocal color robbed the high notes of some of their requisite freshness.
The rest of the production came off much as it had on the previous night. Music Director Nicola Luisotti’s fondness for slow, overemphatic tempos was no more persuasive than it had been — “E lucevan le stelle,” Cavaradossi’s Act 3 aria, became something of a dirge — but the supporting roles, particularly Christian Van Horn’s vocally robust Angelotti, were consistently well-handled.