How Can You Go Wrong with Tosca at the Lyric?

How Can You Go Wrong with Tosca at the Lyric? You can't really. (This isn't the Met, thank you!) It's an easy opera at a beautiful venue in a friendly city.

How can you go wrong with Puccini's gorgeous music? You can't at all. It tells you how the characters are feeling and what they're thinking with clear musical themes, underlying chords, etc. The arias are so memorable.

How can you go wrong with Franco Zeffirelli's sumptuous staging of Rome? Like many Italian icons, Sant'Andrea delle Valle, the Palazzo Farnese, and the Castel Sant'Angelo haven't changed much since the opera's setting in Napoleonic times, nor Puccini's own time, nor ten years ago when I was last there. And Zeffirelli gives us all the the riches, right down to candle snuffers.

How can you go wrong with one of the greatest dramatic sopranos of our day singing an Italian verismo role? Hmmm. Alas, that did go wrong, albeit not terribly. While I think that there is no finer Isolde (as evidenced here a few months ago), Voigt's Tosca taught me that there is a true difference between an Italianate voice and others. Hers is not an Italianate voice; she lacks the warmth when opening above the passaggio, among the many other finite details that the claques love to list. Of course she is an artist of depth, so she sang the character very well and had her own poignant insights to Tosca's beloved aria, "Vissi d'arte."

To match her: the reliable Vladimir Galouzine, an equally dependable a singer, no more Italianate than she, although he has more Italian roles under his belt.

How can you go wrong with the great American bass, James Morris, playing the scary bad guy? YOU CAN'T. He is the definitive Wotan of our times, and he is pretty definitively wonderful in every role he performs. His giant voice carries over and cuts through the orchestra when necessary, and quietly chills in more treacherous episodes. If he needs a fan club after all these years, I am prepared to be a charter member. 100% wow.

In January Tosca continues with a few key replacements. I'm actually going to go again so that I can hear the different Tosca, Cavaradossi, Scarpia, and conductor.

In the end, though, the little quibbles don't amount to much because this opera transcends. It's total erotica because in so many ways it is sensuous, tactile, palpably delicious, and seriously indulgent. Talk about putting you in the mood. You can't really go wrong. You could however get more right.