Then, she found that the doors of his office were locked and returned to the body to rummage at length through his pockets to find the key.

She gave a shudder and went to the corpse to retrieve the letter. The emotional intensity was further diminished after Tosca delivered her scornful line, “E avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma!” and realized that the all-important letter of safe conduct she had bargained for was still with Scarpia’s body. Scarpia and Tosca engaged in their dance of wills, with Tosca inevitably succumbing to Scarpia’s manipulations, but somehow the passion of conquest and the despair of capitulation were not communicated with as much conviction as was expected. In the first act the action moved well, but midway through Act II the energy became more subdued, at a time when it should have been sizzling with intensity. Andrew Sinclair’s direction was symbolic of the curious shift in pacing that eventually dragged down this production, particularly in the third act. Perhaps more lighting would have helped illuminate the action here as well as in the second act. It became such an obstacle that during the “Te deum,” the chorus mostly stood in the back of the stage in the shadows behind a large iron fence and was obscured by the altar, so that the audience was deprived of the full spectacle of this joyous hymn of thanksgiving that is the spirited closing of this first act. In the church of Sant’ Andrea della Valle of Act I, there was an altar center stage that broke up the flow of movement, forcing the performers to circle around it. While the large-scale designs incorporated many impressive elements, such as the details of the ceilings in the cathedral and Scarpia’s office and the depth-of-field perspective of the walls in the seemingly huge structures, there were some aspects that proved daunting for the performers and led to some awkward staging. It offered a behind-the-scenes perspective designed to allow the audience to view the action as if they were a part of the characters’ lives. The set was originally designed for the San Francisco Opera by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. In the San Diego Opera’s first evening of its 2009 season, the singers all delivered enjoyable performances in a mostly solid presentation, but unfortunately it was an uneven production of this classic work. Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca is a tragedy about manipulation and deception, which in true operatic form, involves all the major characters suffering dramatic deaths.

Tosca opera sd