A Tosca with a Twist

If you are one of those people who believe that opera is dead as an art form, run Puccini in an American opera house and see it completely packed on a week night, just like I did last week when I opened my 2011-2012 season with Tosca at the WNO.
Originally, my outing was supposed to take place a week earlier, but because Troy was very sick, I re-scheduled it for a much later date.

Thanks to the wonderful and very accommodating WNO staff, I got a great orchestra aisle seat in Row T (12). Could not be any better!

Patricia Racette and Alan Held
photo courtesy of the WNO

I am happy to inform you, my friends, that my Tosca review made it to the front page of Bachtrack, as well as to the Bachtrack tweeter page. As always, go to

http://www.bachtrack.com/

(or click on it in my My Blogs section on your right) and click on the steaming Scarpia/Tosca photo on their home page. It will immediately take you right to my review, so you could read about an unusual and sizzling chemistry formed in this production.

Well, hopefully, you are back and in addition to everything you read in my review, I would like to say how disappointing it was to see Frank Porretta not coping with the role of Cavaradossi, especially because it was him who knocked down the walls of good old Baltimore Lyric with his Nessun dorma only some 10 years ago… Cynical as it may sound, anything has an expiration date, and voice is no exception to that rule.

To end my post on a more cheerful note, Puccini must have left very specific staging instructions for this opera. I have seen many Toscas, my friends, and in each and every one the scenery is almost ridiculously similar. Don't take me wrong - not boring similar. Rather, pleasingly similar or comfortingly similar. The church - Palazzo Farnese- and Castel Sant' Angelo. The painting of Maria Magdalena is always on our left and the silhouette of the angel is always present in Act 3.