With a hometown soprano in the title role, Indianapolis Opera triumphs in 'Tosca'

Significant scenes from Indianapolis Opera's "Tosca"

European power politics from more than two centuries ago don't bulk large in modern consciousness, but a classic juxtaposition of tyrannical power versus artistic and personal freedom will always hold the stage in the form of Giacomo Puccini's "Tosca."

The opera opened Indianapolis Opera's 2022-23 season Friday night at the Booth Tarkington Theater in Carmel's Center for the Performing Arts. Two performances remain: 7:30 p.m. today and 3 p.m. Sunday.

Driving three audiences toward sell-out status at the 500-seat Tarkington is the presence of renowned local soprano Angela Brown as Floria Tosca. A famous singer portraying a famous singer is virtually guaranteed to get extraordinary attention. Tosca has star quality in circa-1800 Rome, and her story, transferred from a late-19th-century French drama to operatic splendor, carries weight displaying the difficulty of keeping celebrity status out of political matters. Even today, it's fashionable to deplore such an intersection in some quarters, but it can be nearly unavoidable. Celebrities in any milieu are public figures, and are hardly to be enjoined from political expression or participation.

In Tosca's case, her intense love for a politically suspect painter, Mario Cavaradossi, leads her into an ultimately vain effort to save him from the ruthlessness of the Roman police chief, Baron Scarpia. Upon this sturdy three-legged stool of vivid characters the opera rests. It proved more than sturdy on opening night: it was splendid.

As Cavaradossi, Gregory Turay displayed vocal and acting prowess as both lover and fighter. There were places where his commendable dulcet tones could have been brought more into play, as they were in the third act. Yet his control and ardor in the work's first aria, "Recondita armonia," succeeded in lifting up the power of art, to which Tosca lends her support, more plaintively, when she sums up her purpose in life later in "Vissi d'arte." With Alfred Savia conducting, the coordination seemed pretty well-honed throughout, and the slightly underpowered orchestra radiated warmth and sounded sufficient despite the reduced ensemble size.

"Vissi d'arte," which Brown sang gloriously, is the lyrical zenith of the second act, upon which director James Marvel lavishes most of his praise for "Tosca" in his program note. His attention bore fruit on opening night. The way he moved Tosca and Scarpia around the set, which suggested lavishness without quite achieving it, was imaginative and sometimes surprising. 

The surprise was centered on how he had Andrew Potter, a physically and vocally imposing Scarpia, occasionally collapse on the couch the police chief has clearly eyed as the place where he would consummate his lust for the singer. This was a man whose power is on the verge of being undone by his sensuality. If sinking onto the chaise represented a pause in the chase, the message was that the man's predatory cruelty arises out of weakness. Scarpia is also subject to swooning over perfumes, and the related refinement of taste is strongly implied. His dress-up garb for seduction (part of a magnificent wardrobe in toto designed by Susan Memmott Allred for Utah Opera and lent to this company) likewise conveyed the character's customary focus on taste to the exclusion of decency.

Raw grappling cannot be avoided, of course, since Tosca is quite resistant. Brown and Potter engaged in it with believable vigor. His toying with a dagger as the act opens foretells the use to which it will be put to dispatch him. In a more remote foreshadowing, the jealous Tosca waves a paintbrush pointedly at her lover in Act 1 as she insists that Cavaradossi darken the eyes of the portrait he's working on so they look more like her own. 

The pace of the final moments of Act 2 was superb, with Tosca's departure from Scarpia's apartment, voiceless aside from her ringing spoken line "and to think that he terrorized all Rome." As the nervous assassin's religiosity re-emerges, in this production she places candles on either side of his legs, not his head. I don't see a significance in that departure from the libretto, but maybe it has a meaning I haven't fathomed. I bring it up here only because every detail  of Marvel's direction seems purposeful and well-thought-out.

The brief but telling choruses, especially at the end of the first act, had the spine-tingling impact they need, as Scarpia roars that he has forgotten God. Potter's stentorian bass cut through the tumult. Earlier, the playfulness of the choirboys, the Sacristan (comical, but not overplayed, by Rick Purvis) and others is stunningly interrupted by the police chief's entrance, as the search for the escaped prisoner Angelotti (furtive and desperate in Austin Sieber's effective portrayal) gathers steam. That's when the solidity of the production, thanks to the three principals, was confirmed and, from then on, sustained.

Framing other technical aspects under Eric Matters' design, Valeriya Nedvig's sets were effective when they sketched in enough of the three architecturally important settings to help guide the drama. Tilman Piedmont's lighting attained particular stature when the spotlight turned on Tosca for "Vissi d'arte," and the lights dimmed elsewhere to emphasize the singer's lonely meditation on her plight. On the other hand, several color changes in the cloudy nighttime sky of the final act were distracting, an unnecessary touch of Expressionism.

The tension around Cavaradossi's scheduled execution and the affectionate interplay between the lovers, so soon to give way to tragedy, were aptly moving. Only Tosca's plunge off the parapet to her death looked more cautious than climactic. But you can't risk injury to your diva by privileging a plausible leap over everything else. And this production wonderfully fulfills that "everything else."

Joseph Kerman's dismissive phrase about "Tosca" — "that shabby little shocker" — is the most cited quotation from his otherwise valuable study "Opera as Drama." The worst thing about that snipe is that Puccini's opera is in no way shabby, and the Indianapolis Opera production demonstrates just how masterly and well-shaped "Tosca" really is.

[Photo collage by Denis Ryan Kelly Jr.]