TOSCA by Giacomo Puccini (Canadian Opera Company). At the Four Seasons Centre (145 Queen West). To February 25. $12-$318. 416-363-8231. See listing. Rating: NNN
Tosca is one of Puccini’s most performed operas, with good reason: the gorgeous melodies keep pouring out, the tale is full of excitement, and the three central characters are drawn in bold primary colours.
But the current Canadian Opera Company production, directed by Paul Curran, goes for inflated melodrama without making us care much for the people involved.
Prima donna Tosca (Adrianne Pieczonka, alternating with Julie Makerov) and her lover, Cavaradossi (Carlo Ventre, alternating with Brandon Jovanovich), find themselves caught up with Scarpia (Mark Delavan), Rome’s chief of police, in a story that combines politics and lust.
Maybe it was opening-night jitters, but there was little believable interplay between the characters until the middle of the first act that connection came and went over the remaining two acts.
Pieczonka is a fine actor/singer who understands and communicates the passionate Tosca’s myriad emotional moods, but she didn’t come alive until her first encounter with Scarpia. Their increasingly tense encounter in act two was more histrionic than powerful, but when she came to the work’s most famous aria, Vissi d’arte, Pieczonka was musically pure and emotionally convincing.
Ventre began with a tight voice, pushing his high notes whenever he could for crowd-pleasing effect. His interaction with Pieczonka was minimal until the final act, when his Cavaradossi blossomed into a warm, tender character.
Delavan’s Scarpia had some good dramatic moments early on, but he became a stock villain in the second act menace is usually scarier when it’s played low-key.
Conductor Paolo Carignani drew rich sounds from the COC orchestra too bad the drama wasn’t as well served.
jonkap@nowtoronto.com
