OPERA REVIEW : A Troubled ‘Tosca’ in San Francisco

“Tosca” has been a popular tenant at the War Memorial Opera House for a long time. In fact, Puccini’s terse, mellifluously tawdry melodrama was the very first tenant at the crossroads of Grove and Van Ness, 60 years ago.

Many a diva has leaped to her picturesque death from the ramparts of the Castel Sant’Angelo in the interim, after dispatching many a lecherous villain with a handy fruit-knife. Many an amorous tenor has apostrophied the starry night as a prelude to facing a fake firing squad that--drat the luck--turns out to be not so fake.

Numerous directors and designers have had their way with the blood-and-gutsy libretto set in historic Rome, c. 1800. “Tosca,” we were beginning to believe, could virtually play itself in San Francisco.

When the opera returned to open the season this year, however, things looked a little different. Not better, necessarily, but different.

The dramatic perspective reflected the imagination of Frank Galati, a renowned refugee, as it were, from the so-called legitimate theater. New sets were created by Tony Walton, a celebrated veteran of various Broadway wars. As his costuming accomplice, Lotfi Mansouri engaged Willa Kim, whose most recent triumph on the Great White Way was “The Will Rogers Follies.”

With all this high-profile show-biz talent on hand, one looked forward to narrative revelations. What one saw, alas, came closer to tired convention at one extreme and muddled obfuscation at the other.

The first indication that all might not be well arrived in the form of a declaration of interpretive intention from the director. Formal explanations are always danger signals.

“Tosca,” according to Galati, “is a work of theater about theater; a work of art about art, one that constantly refers to itself as a work of art. . . . This is a work constantly aware of itself as illusion, as theater, as artifice. . . . Tony Walton and I tried to create an image of nesting frames on stage in order to suggest the reverberating energy of illusion and reality which is constantly illuminating the various dimensions of human character in the opera.”

Oh.

I’m sure this is all very profound in theory, and it may even mean something in English. At the opera house on Friday, however, the Galati-Walton “Tosca” seemed clumsy, contrived and confusing.

The proscenium was outlined with an ornate picture frame that conveniently enclosed the supertitle screen while it encased what passed for stage action. In the first two scenes, the gimmick--I mean device--found its echo in smaller frames within the set. Cavaradossi stepped through one to paint his portrait of Mary Magdalen, through another to enter Scarpia’s torture chamber.

The inner-frame motif was abandoned, for some reason, in the last act. Even so, the message was established by then: All the world’s a museum.

It is, moreover, a museum of alienation. Scenic angles are turned violently askew. Banks of stage lights are left exposed above the canvas that depicts a realistic Sant’Andrea della Valle.

All this, apparently, is supposed to represent a Brechtian vision of verismo. Unfortunately, it is a cluttered vision, and it evolves without much regard for stylistic consistency or dramatic reason. Most troubling, it decorates a performance that adheres--as far as the singing-(quasi)actors are concerned--to a dull and tired performing tradition.

With vital musical impulses, all still might not have been lost. But, as conducted by Daniel Oren, this “Tosca” remained all too polite and pallid. One had to admire the Israeli maestro’s introspection. He encouraged more piano phrasing, more lyrical expansion than convention might dictate. But he lost tension in the leisurely process, and elicited neither precision from his orchestra nor passion from his singers.

It should be noted, of course, that the “Tosca” cast at his disposal was of uneven quality. What else is new in 1992?

The tempestuous title role served to introduce Maria Guleghina, a Ukrainian soprano who has sung in New York both with the Met and the Kirov. She commands plenty of power for the great climaxes and tries conscientiously to sing softly when pathos beckons. She also encounters occasional difficulty keeping tone and pitch in proper focus.

She did look handsome, even in Kim’s fussily vulgar gowns, and she enacted the usual charades with earnest dedication. That, alas, should not be confused with overpowering conviction. The ghosts of the model Marias--Jeritza and Callas--can still rest in peace.

Her less than idiomatic partner was Sergei Larin, a Lithuanian Cavaradossi from Bratislava making his American debut. He revealed a solid middleweight tenor--good resources compromised by a variable technique and diminished by a placid temperament. He did nothing seriously wrong, and nothing memorably right.

Juan Pons returned as a burly, bullying Scarpia. He seemed passably imposing so long as one did not think of the slimy elegance of a Tito Gobbi, the demonic force of a George London or the heroic sensuality of a Robert Weede. Ah, for the good old days.

The supporting cast was easily dominated by Francois Loup, an endearingly crusty, bel-canto Sacristan who, thank goodness, avoided would-be comic tics and buffo distortions. Alan Held, elsewhere a junior Wotan, mustered a comparatively fervent Angelotti. The sweet-toned Brian Asawa may have earned an asterisk in history by being the first countertenor to sing the offstage shepherd calls. The others tended to fade into the lavishly irrelevant scenery.