I was lucky enough to go to the opening night of Tosca at the San Francisco Opera last night.  Tosca happens to be one of my mother's favorite operas. The desperate & longing filled arias & it's dark opening 'Scarpia chords'  bringing  to mind, for someone of my generation, Darth Vadar all the way to 11, have been ringing through my ears for more years than I care to remember. 

I go to the opera because I want to be rocked to my core by the voices. I want to weep openly in public at the beauty of the thing that is being achieved by the human voice. It doesn't happen often. Recently  I was a veritable basket case after The Magic Flute at SF Opera last year. If you EVER get the chance to hear Erika Miklosa play the Queen of the Night do yourself a HUGE favor and go.  

Anyway, back to Tosca.  For those of you who didn't have Puccini's repertoire drummed into them at the age of 8 here's the low down. Rome in 1800, artist, opera singer nasty bad guy chief of police with huge power in the church and town and escaped convict. Jealously, love, lust, art, betrayal, torture, murder and suicide, I think all those bases are pretty well covered. For the actual story this is a link to  the Met's website http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/history/stories/synopsis.aspx?id=25

Apparently it started out as a play, one which George Bernard Shaw said should have "never have been let past the stage door  of the Garrick" it was such a "cheap shocker". He also said "Oh, if it had but been an opera!" Hmmm.   Sarah Bernhardt most famously played the role of Floria Tosca in that form and many of the things she brought to the role are kept even today.

Last night  soprano Adrianne Pieczonka, made her company debut, singing the role of Floria Tosca. She nailed every note with ease and during her solo in the second act (when she is faced with the choice of giving her body to Scarpia in exchange for the release of her artist lover who is being tortured in the next room) she brought the air in the opera house to complete stillness.  There was this sense of a everyone holding their breath, no-one moved or thought about anything  but Tosca, her beautiful voice and her terrible predicament.

As Mario Cavaradossi, her artist-rebel of a lover, tenor Carlo Ventre moved everyone to riotous applause during the first & third acts. He has a full and emotion filled voice and I thought he was perfect for the role.

There was something 'silent movie' menacing about Lado Ataneli as Baron Scarpia, he was like an oversized elongated shadow of something with sharp claws creeping along a wall about to pounce at any moment.

So, if you get a chance to go (there are relatively cheap seats to be had believe it or not) it's playing from June 2nd to 26th.

http://www.sfopera.com