Opera Review: In bad faith

Opera Theatre of St. Louis’s new production of Puccini’s 1900 political tragedy “Tosca” is the third in the company’s history and the first in 20 years. This new version, under the direction of company Artistic Director James Robinson, boasts an excellent cast and a sympathetic, finely shaped reading of the score by members of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra led by the outstanding Daniela Candillari. It is marred only by a couple of cases of self-indulgent excess by Robinson.

Robert Stahley
Photo: Eric Woolsey

More on that later, though. Let’s start with the good news, beginning with bass-baritone Hunter Enoch’s superb performance as the repellent Baron Scarpia. A classic sociopath consumed with lust and sadism, Scarpia is a textbook case of how an elaborate display of public piety can be a false front for a rotten soul. Moreover, his position as the chief law enforcement officer of the Roman theocracy makes him an ideal advertisement for the wisdom of the separation of Church and State.

Enoch makes Scarpia the villain you love to hate. With a big, ringing voice and a magnetic stage presence, Enoch gives us a Scarpia who, like Zoltan Karpathy, “oils his way across the floor” when he enters at the end of Act I. He exudes smug piety while plotting to use Tosca’s passionate attachment to her lover, the painter Cavaradossi, to betray both him and the escaped political prisoner Angelotti, with tragic results for all concerned. When Tosca cuts Scarpia’s throat with a razor (as opposed to the knife Puccini and his librettists intended) at the end of Act II it is (as Patroclus says in “Troilus and Cressida”) “a good riddance.”

Speaking of Tosca, soprano Katie Van Kooten, who has often been praised for her impressive combination of vocal power and delicacy, demonstrates in her sensitive, multi-layered performance just how she earned those accolades. Tosca is, frankly, a character whose combination of excessive jealousy and (for a supposedly experienced singer and actress) astonishing naivete can be a hard sell. But Van Kooten manages it.

Titus Muzi III and cast
Photo: Jessica Flanigan

She doesn’t do it alone, of course. There has to be serious emotional chemistry between Tosca and Cavaradossi to make their dual tragedy convincing. Cynthia Lawrence and Stephen Mark Brown did it in in 2003 and the combination of Van Kooten and tenor Robert Stahley—last seen here as the cheerfully clueless William Marshall in OTSL’s killer “Regina” in 2018—work the same magic here. Stahley has one of those clarion-clear Heldentenor voices that, when combined with Van Kooten’s in their big love duets, delivers an electrifying effect.

The supporting cast is solid as well. As Angelotti, the former consul of the Roman Republic on the run from Scarpia’s goons, bass-baritone Joseph Park is the very picture of the fear-haunted fugitive. Baritone Titus Muzi III is perfection as the comically fussy Sacristan, muttering about “filthy artists” as he steals Cavaradossi’s lunch. And mezzo Xiao Xiao is a charming offstage presence as the Shepherd Boy, whose sad folk song is heard in the distance as the Act III curtain rises on the grim prison of the Castel Sant’Angelo, where both Cavaradossi and Tosca will breathe their last.

L-R: Huner Enoch, Robert Stahley,
Kellen Schrimper, Adam Catangui
Photo: Jessica Flanigan

In his program notes, Director Robinson writes that because of the opera’s “rich historical context” he and his designers “have enthusiastically decided to firmly ground the production in Rome of 1800 and, in a sense, take a page from the original play in terms of its scale.” Later on, however, he adds that he has decided to  “illuminate the story with a nod to those who excelled at dark psychosexual storytelling, such as Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, and Luis Buñuel.”

One of these things is not like the other.

If you think that means there will be extensive use of video projections, you’d be right. When they’re used to set the scene (as in Act III) they can be very effective. When they’re used to display pseudo-film noir videos that merely belabor the action on stage, they are less useful, if not downright annoying.

The most irritating example of the latter comes at the end of Act I. As conceived by Puccini, it shows Scarpia plotting the seduction and betrayal of Tosca while the chorus celebrates High Mass. Over the massed sound of the chorus, full orchestra, organ, bells, and drums simulating cannon-fire, Scarpia’s visions of lust rise in sync with the choir’s praise of God. As the Te Deum rises to a climax, Scarpia sings “Tosca, mi fai dimenticare Iddio!” (“Tosca, you make me forget God!). As an example of theatrical irony, it’s hard to beat.

That, however, is not what happens in this production. Instead we get Scarpia alone on stage, clutching and eventually arousing himself sexually with Tosca’s glove while the choir is banished to an offstage presence. We also get slow-motion video closeups of this in the background, presumably to ensure that we Get the Point.

This is not just gratuitous, but openly disrespectful of Puccini’s intentions.  As Julian Buden writes in Grove Online, “Puccini was much concerned with authenticity of detail. His friend Father Pietro Panichelli supplied him with information regarding the plainsong melody to which the Te Deum was sung in Roman churches, the correct order of the cardinal’s procession and the costumes of the Swiss Guard.” All this is swept aside, and the result can hardly be called an improvement.

Katie Van Kooten, Enoch Hunter
Photo: Eric Woolsey

Tosca’s death at the end of Act III is also drained of dramatic impact by relying on self-consciously surreal video, but that is, I suppose, small beer by comparison.

Those two fumbles aside, the directorial and scenic choices generally work quite well, keeping the action tense and character driven. Allen Moyer’s massive, imposing sets are appropriately dark and threatening, and his use of a greyscale color palette with accents of blood red is a nice match for the “old movie” style of Greg Emetaz’s videos.

Overall I’d give this “Tosca” a B, since the positives far outweigh the negatives.

A final note: whether by accident or design, Opera Theatre of St. Louis is presenting two works this season in which the principal villain hides his moral bankruptcy behind a pseudo-Christian façade. In Carlisle Floyd’s “Susannah,”  preacher Olin Blitch dominates a small Appalachian church with rants about the “three Ss” (sin, sex, and Satan) while secretly lusting after the innocent title character. In “Tosca,” Scarpia presents a pious image in public while reveling in sexual sadism in private. Either way, the resemblance to certain public figures is hard to miss.

“Tosca” continues in rotating repertory with the rest of the OTSL season through June 25th. Performances are sung in English with English supertitles at the Loretto-Hilton Center on the Webster University campus. For more information, visit the Opera Theatre web site.