Business-as-Usual ‘Tosca’ Opens San Diego Season

Every actor wants to play Hamlet. And every soprano wants to play Tosca. Some should, and some shouldn’t.

The temptations are obvious. Puccini’s glamorous, melodramatic and mellifluous heroine gets to sing some glorious music, including that most beloved of show-stopping arias, “Vissi d’arte.” In a beguiling case of art imitating art, after a wishful fashion, the diva on duty gets to portray a let’s-pretend diva. She gets to model two or three lavish period gowns. She gets to love the heroic tenor and murder the nasty baritone, after which she gets to execute one of the most effective and affecting exits in all opera. And, as if all that weren’t enough, she gets to end the night leaping to a picturesque death from the battlements of the Castel Sant’Angelo.

Tuesday at the Civic Theatre it was Nelly Miricioiu’s turn.

Miricioiu, a famous Romanian impersonating the famous Roman, doesn’t happen to command the dramatic vocal resources demanded by the composer. But she isn’t the first lyric soprano to attempt the challenge, and such stalwarts as Licia Albanese and Dorothy Kirsten proved long ago that a light sound, carefully husbanded, can make an impact in this heavy role. Unfortunately, Miricioiu doesn’t always go in for careful husbanding.

When she sings softly, her tone is bright, lustrous and sensuous. When fortes and, worse, fortissimos beckon, however, her tone turns unresonant, hard and edgy. When she stretches for climactic top notes, the pitch sometimes sags.

A handsome woman and an intelligent actress with vast stage experience behind her, she does her best to camouflage vocal weaknesses with histrionic strengths. Still, she does a lot of forcing in the process, and the results aren’t always pretty.

The current “Tosca,” which opened the 31st San Diego Opera season on Saturday (in conflict with “Otello” in Costa Mesa), is the company’s fifth edition of the Puccini potboiler. For this festive occasion, Ian D. Campbell and cohorts turned to San Francisco to borrow the concept and fancy decors created by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle in 1972.

Ponnelle was a visionary director and designer whose death in 1988 deprived opera of an extraordinarily bold and stimulating, albeit controversial, force. In “Tosca,” he gave the audience a detailed view of Sant’Andrea della Valle from a new perspective--behind the altar. He turned Scarpia’s study in the Farnese Palace into a dark, ornate tomb. He allowed the ramparts of the Castel Sant’Angelo to be literally overshadowed by the towering statue of the Avenging Angel--seen from the rear as an empty, propped-up facade.

Contrary to program promises, Bliss Hebert, the competent but unimaginative director on duty here, ignores the innovations of Ponnelle’s original staging. Tosca doesn’t stab Scarpia in the back while he sits at his desk, for instance, and she doesn’t exit prematurely through a central maze of doors leading to more doors. The firing squad doesn’t face the nervous public as it dispatches Cavaradossi downstage center. For better or worse, San Diego settles for “Tosca” business as usual (costumes by Suzanne Mess, lighting by Allen Charles Klein).

The air of enlightened routine is reinforced in the pit, where Edoardo Muller stirs a thick and comfy Puccini broth. Nothing goes painfully wrong. Nothing goes memorably right.

Cesar Hernandez introduces a pleasant-looking, pleasant-sounding, somewhat monochromatic Cavaradossi whose tenor sometimes wobbles under pressure. James Morris makes a mighty noise as an all-American Scarpia devoid of baronial elegance as well as evil insinuation.

The best of the comprimarios is Roberto Gomez, a crisply understated Sacristan. Alan Fischer, making his debut in place of the originally scheduled Beau Palmer, musters a placid Spoletta. David Downing makes Angelotti resemble Rip van Winkle and returns for odd double duty as his tormenter Sciarrone.

The enthusiastic audience had an especially good time with the supertitles, reading Tosca’s urgent declarations of jealousy in Act 1 as comic relief and laughing before the lines in question could be sung. There has to be a better way.

* “Tosca,” presented by the San Diego Opera at the Civic Theatre, 3rd Avenue at B Street, San Diego. Remaining performances Friday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., Jan. 31 at 7 p.m. $23-$95 (student rush seats, if available, $15). (619) 236-6510.