Here is my Tuesday January 12 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Sunday afternoon January 10, 2009, opening performance of the second cast of Tosca at Lyric Opera of Chicago. There are five more performances through January 29.
Violeta Urmana and Marco Berti star in the new cast of Puccini's Tosca at Lyric Opera of Chicago.
'Tosca' an old-fashioned treat
Second cast, conductor have the charm
BY ANDREW PATNER
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There are so many ways to get an opera wrong these days. A European opera director can shift the story and place of a work to a time and locale that makes no sense and where everyone mimes sexual acts for no particular reason. A theatre director can miss the point of a melodramatic opera and try to make it into a psychological study that it isn't at all. A company can cast the wrong performers or a diva can demand -- and get -- a role that isn't right for her. A conductor can make a score too heavy, too fast, or just incoherent.
So it's refreshing -- even for fans of operatic experimentation done well -- to see an old-fashioned opera done in an old-fashioned way and done just right. That's what's happening with the second cast that reopened Lyric Opera of Chicago's revival of Puccini's Tosca on Sunday afternoon at the Civic Opera House. Lyric's initial season-opening cast, led by Deborah Voigt, and the opera's music direction drew mixed responses in the fall.
Lithuanian soprano Violeta Urmana, making a much-belated Lyric debut in the title role, is a Tosca as the fictional Roman character -- a much-beloved singing actress of 1800 -- would have played herself: passionate yet human, jealous but courageous, a woman of the stage who finds her backbone in real-life romantic and political conflict. There are no diva games going on here -- no posing, no milking of the audience's expectations: Urmana simply is Floria Tosca. And her arias -- none more so than the signature "Vissi d'arte" ("I lived for art, I lived for love") -- arise organically from plot and character.
Although Italian tenor Marco Berti, also making a debut here, might at first appear to fall into the park-and-bark mode of hefty singers of another era, he quickly emerges as a Cavaradossi who matches Urmana's Tosca perfectly. His voice is strong, but blends easily with hers, and his acting chops slowly surprise us in a positive way. This is a Cavaradossi who appears aware of just what is going on in the intrigues taking place all around him.
Italian baritone Lucio Gallo seems to know that his voice is a bit light for the part of the reactionary and lecherous Bourbon police chief Baron Scarpia. Yet he consistently finds both effective vocal solutions and displays such a believable internally-driven performance of a character both evil and twisted that he, too, wins us over.
Credit must surely also go to stage director Garnett Bruce and the associate director for this cast, Paula Suozzi, for reanimating the classic 1964 (!) Franco Zeffirelli-Renzo Mongiardino-Marcel Escoffier production in such a way as to allow for the individual choices and strengths of their three leads.
American conductor Stephen Lord, music director of Opera Theatre of St. Louis, is yet another debutant here; he brings a touch both careful -- in the good sense -- and easy, one that emphasizes Puccini's lyricism and humanity, never over-presses, and allows the Lyric Orchestra to shine.
American bass-baritones Craig Irvin, a second-year Ryan Center member, and Dale Travis, a company veteran who also is a hilarious Petrovinian ambassador in Lyric's current The Merry Widow, return admirably to their roles as the revolutionary Angelotti and the church sacristan, as does Ryan Center soprano Angela Mannino who really does sound like a shepherd boy in her crucial Act 3 offstage role. And comprimario tenor David Cangelosi does his customary turn as Scarpia's henchman Spoletta for this January cast.
Tosca had its world première in Rome on January 14, 1900, which made it one of the first operas of its century, if not the very first. There are times, even 110 years later, when it's good to see a production and performances of the kind that made you fall in love with opera in the first place.
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