OPERA REVIEW : A Brave New ‘Tosca’

Most opera companies take good old, tired old “Tosca” for granted.

Puccini’s magnificently mawkish music seldom fails, even when the hacks have their way with it. The creaky but taut old melodrama of passion, love, lust and fatal manipulation virtually plays itself.

Just find a reasonable facsimile of a diva who can look imperious, sing “Vissi d’arte” flat on her belly, dispatch the evil Scarpia with a picturesque flourish of a handy fruit knife and, at whomping-cadence time, leap to the backstage mattress from the top of the Castel Sant’Angelo with a semblance of suicidal conviction. The rest usually falls more or less into place without much fuss.

The Music Center Opera, which opened its season with the shabbily wonderful little verismo shocker on Wednesday, could have done “Tosca” by the numbers and scored an easy popular success in the process. The same company did just that in 1985, with some help from the West Berlin Opera. On that forgettable occasion, the chief attraction didn’t happen to be the soprano, but a romantic tenorissimo--Placido Domingo--provided compensation as her idealistic lover. Basically, it was “Tosca” business as usual.

Not this time.

This time, Domingo swapped Cavaradossi’s paintbrush for the conductor’s baton and, contrary to some fears, wielded it very competently. The real news of the evening, however, emanated from the stage, where Ian Judge, the director, revealed some interesting--as well as some irksome--ideas about the piece; where John Gunter, the set designer, showed us a compelling--if occasionally troubling--perspective of Scarpia’s Rome, and, most important, where Maria Ewing--Los Angeles’ unorthodox Salome--triumphed over another case of anti-type casting.

Judge, who inherited the staging duties from Elijah Moshinsky, who in turn was to have taken over from the originally scheduled Peter Hall, stressed credibility and intimacy in the interplay of the central characters. He told the primitive story briskly and with exceptional clarity. He permitted no poses and only a few cliches: a Mephistophelean Scarpia crushing a rose in his fist at the climax of the Te Deum, Tosca collapsing conveniently to the floor for her greatest hit, the firing squad facing the audience, Capobianco style, at Cavaradossi’s execution.

Judge’s only controversial contribution involved the decision to move the action forward a century, to the period when the opera was written. The 1900 milieu did little harm to the fundamental tone, but it didn’t help much, either. And it made the crucial reference to Napoleon’s victory at Marengo ridiculous.

Gunter’s stark yet imposing sets played gently yet tellingly with stylization and disorientation. Angles went slightly askew. Scarpia’s study was turned into a barren,

stifling chamber dominated by a bloody crucifix. The castle prison looked exceptionally bleak and genuinely oppressive.

It was good to be spared the usual essays in wrinkled-canvas realism. Still, a few details proved confusing. What was one to make of the ornate picture frame that neatly surrounded each of the three scenes? Why did Tosca complain of being locked out in the first act, when she could have strolled in through one of the open arches on either side of the gate? Why was the action always confined to a central wedge that severely restricted sight lines out front? Why couldn’t the garish lights behind the cyclorama sky in the last act have been masked?

Even if some of the desired illusions remained elusive, this was a strikingly atmospheric, genuinely dramatic production. Liz da Costa’s costumes defined character deftly, just as Marie Barrett’s shadowy lighting reinforced mood.

Nature did not happen to endow Ewing with the ideal Tosca voice. Her soprano--or is it a pushed-up mezzo?--has no cutting edge like Maria Callas’. It isn’t ethereal like Zinka Milanov’s or lustrous like Renata Tebaldi’s. It isn’t even sleek like Dorothy Kirsten’s or gutsy like Licia Albanese’s.

Ewing has to work hard to ride the great climaxes. She has to do some clever vocal compensating for weaknesses in the lower register. She has to pace herself cannily to sustain the final apostrophe on the parapet. She chops phrases in strange places when breath runs short.

And yet it hardly matters.

What does matter is her total commitment, her subtle inflection of the text, her shading of the line, her unstinting honesty, generosity and expressive intensity. She makes Tosca an exceptionally vulnerable yet impetuous young woman from the start. Obsessively in love with Cavaradossi, she can be playful, sensuous and dangerously capricious. This heroine commands a sense of humor as well as a sense of purpose.

Watch her eyes when she spots the fruit knife. Watch her mouth when Scarpia touches her. Watch her arms when she gives Cavaradossi last-minute acting lessons. Watch how she desperately pins the dying Scarpia to the floor with her body, and observe the release of tension and onset of terror in her second-act exit.

Most important, perhaps, listen to the natural way she floats the melodic line on the words. She permits no parlando distortions, no showy exaggerations, no glamorous indulgences.

This challenge, which she is confronting for the first time in her career, stretches her resources. Her solutions to some of the inherent problems may alarm some purists. Never mind. She is exciting.

Neil Shicoff complements her as a lyrical, sympathetic, youthful, bright-toned Cavaradossi who occasionally wants to make bigger tenor-sounds than wisdom might dictate. Justino Diaz as Scarpia has abandoned the elegant Titto Gobbi imitation he introduced here a decade ago with the New York City Opera; now he concentrates, quite effectively, on brutish fervor and Mafioso persuasion.

The strong supporting cast includes Louis Lebherz as an urgent Angelotti, Michael Gallup as a Sacristan free of buffo mannerisms, Robin Buck as a Spoletta minus caricature villainy, John Atkins as a suavely formidable Sciarrone, Lisa Perry as an over-amplified offstage Shepherd and Wayne Shepperd as a mellifluous Jailor.

Domingo may let the orchestra play too loud from time to time. He doesn’t always search for hidden dynamic nuances and, when in doubt, he lapses into ponderous tempos. Nevertheless, he conducts this opera--an opera he must know very well--with welcome authority, breadth and eloquence.