Princeton Festival Opera Review: ‘Tosca’

Giacomo Puccini once said, “God touched me with His little finger, and said, ‘Write for the theater, only for the theater.’”

For me, “theater” is the operative word in that quote. In the decades I’ve been writing about live entertainment, I’ve favored opera productions that stress theater, the putting on of a play and deft characterization as much as it concentrates on the music, vocal, and orchestral.

The Princeton Festival production of “Tosca,” which, alas, has seen its ephemeral time on the stage and is now a fond memory, met the standards of strong, engaging theater as much as any opera I’ve seen.

Opera is, in some ways, the pinnacle of theater. It’s a mode in which everything, including grand music and complex arrangements, combines with story and design to emphasize love, power, or comic commentary with size, intensity, and depth.

An opera score by masters like Puccini, my personal choice for the best of them all, is a work of art in itself. Add characters like Tosca, Mimi, Butterfly, Turandot, and the men who love or betray them, and you have some of the best theater has to offer.

Eve Summer’s production of “Tosca” for the Princeton Festival exemplified all of that.

Summer kept her production small and intimate. She rarely crowded the stage, letting the full drama of Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa’s libretto affect the audience the way theater does. This up-close and personal rendition of “Tosca” made Illica and Giacosa’s story about a diva embroiled in a political situation involving the artist and revolutionary she loves and the powerful politician who craves her come to vibrant life.

Rossen Milanov and the excellent Princeton Symphony Orchestra were perfect in tone and tempo, rendering Puccini’s lush, evocative score with all its inherent beauty. Toni Maria Palmertree (Tosca), Luis Ledesma (Scarpia), Victor Starsky (Cavaradossi), and others sang soaringly and expressively.

But both Milanov’s musicians and Summer’s cast did more. They humanized “Tosca” in a way opera sometimes forgets to do. Milanov set a meticulous pace for the performance, one keyed to enhance the singers while taking advantage of some of Puccini’s most passionate and dramatic orchestral passages between scenes and the singers’ arias. Palmertree, Ledesma, Starsky, and their castmates acted as well as they sang, endowing their characters with personality and intention that made Summer’s production complete, a total work of theater rather than the concert opera often becomes. One did not only hear marvelous phrasing and delight in glorious voices, but one knew what each character wanted and got involved with that. Summer’s “Tosca” made the operatic characters present, real, and immediate. Palmertree brought you in touch with Tosca’s feelings and ultimate dilemma.

Starsky brought out the heroism, loyalty, and passion in Cavaradossi. Ledesma was a wonder of charm and oily villainy as Scarpia. These performers were as adept as both actors and singers. They and their supporting cast showed you all opera can be by making you feel they were living their roles while treating you to flawless vocal artistry.

Bravi to all involved with this “Tosca.” That includes lighting designer Paul Kilsdonk, who once the production begins, transforms what looks like the dull gray walls of Rome’s Sant’Andrea della Valle church into a warm, comforting setting by burnishing the important figure of the Madonna in gold light and turning the dull gray into a rich mauve.

Individually and as company, Summer’s cast acquitted itself well.

Toni Marie Palmertree, by expression or posture, could show the many shades of Floria Tosca, a famous star of the Roman stage, within a moment. Devotion, humor, playfulness, passion, and even humility in Tosca’s tribute to the Madonna come through with minutes of Palmertree being on stage. You see her joy in meeting with her lover, Cavaradossi, and how jealous Tosca becomes when she notices the face of the pious woman Cavaradossi is painting on Sant’Andrea’s wall is not hers but one she recognizes as the sister of an imprisoned revolutionary, Angelotti (Eric Delagrange).

Palmertree also lets you see Tosca’s talent for quick thinking as she devises a plot she believes will keep the escaped Angelotti from being caught by police chief Scarpia’s officers and returned to jail for execution by hanging.

While I revel in how precise the acting of Palmertree and others was, I cannot forget the constant staple of opera, the singers’ voices.

Vocally, Palmertree is a sincere and direct Tosca, making any emotion the diva has clear and pointed. Her voice has many colors and can be teasing and coy as adroitly as it can be angry and passionate.

In all moods and situations, Palmertree’s Tosca sings with clarity. Even when she is being strategically deceptive, as with Scarpia or when she wants to know the identity of the woman Cavaradossi is painting, there is honesty and purpose in her tone.

Unlike in most operas, particularly Puccini’s, Tosca is the only woman who appears on stage in an important role. Or any role. Palmertree takes the stage with an assurance that also shows you Floria Tosca’s status in Rome, a status that has her selected to sing a major anthem to celebrate a military victory.

In Summer’s production, it’s no surprise that harmonies among Palmertree, Ledesma, Starsky, and others are pure and lovely.

It is also no surprise that Palmertree is outstanding in “Tosca’s” most famous aria, “Vissi d’arte” and the picture of hope as she confesses to a now-condemned Cavaradossi how she has saved his life and secured him a letter of free passage in “O dolce mani.”

Luis Ledesma’s Scarpia is the kind of character you want to hiss and cheer at the same time. In Scarpia’s position as the police chief in charge of keeping revolutionaries at bay, jailing them when they become too ardent, as with Angelotti, or conspiratorial, as with Cavaradossi, Ledesma is strong, commanding, and pleased as his captures. As one who has admired Tosca from afar and longs to realize his romantic intentions towards her, Ledesma is alternately a charming, flattering wooer who looks like he’s been around this flirtatious block before, and a man bordering on lechery as he bargains with Tosca, an offer she may not be able to refuse, when his softer, more practiced mode of seduction doesn’t work.

The deftness with which Ledesma goes between the longing lover and sly threatener not only demonstrates how fine an actor he is — his leers and smiles at Tosca, simultaneously genuine and sinister — but how sophisticated a man of the world Scarpia is, one as naturally worthy of his powerful role in Italy’s government as Tosca is her status on stage.

I thought of Laurence Olivier’s marriage proposal to the unwilling widow, Lady Anne, in “Shakespeare’s Richard III” when Ledesma sings how much Scarpia yearns for Tosca in “Ha più sapore.”

Like his co-stars, Victor Starsky shows the various sides of Cavaradossi. The artist, talking to Sant’Andrea’s sacristan before knowing Angelotti is hiding in the church, is someone both in love, with Tosca, and confused about why he is moved to paint another woman’s face in a mural for the church. His lovely “Recondite Armenia” asks plainly how he can be so enamored of Tosca and captivated by another woman’s face.

Once Cavaradossi discovers Angelotti and agrees to help him elude Scarpia and his gallows, Starsky’s sure tenor becomes rich and heroic in tone. The sensitivity, combined with strength, comes through in his stirring third act aria, “E lucevan le stelle,” a tribute to Tosca.

Eric Delagrange sets the tone of “Tosca’s” excellence with his early appearance as a fugitive who comes to Sant’Andrea to get a costume and other necessary items his sister left to aid his escape. He plaintively explains his position and why he is committed to revolution.

In his meeting with Cavaradossi, a friend and sympathizer he enlists to help him, Angelotti’s bass turns both more tender and committed. Like the others, Delagrange acts his role as well as he sings it.

Nicholas Nestorak is a familiar figure at the Princeton Festival, acing lead roles and well as some key supports. In “Tosca,” he plays Spoletta, Scarpia’s dedicated assistant. As usual, Nestorak sings his part perfectly while showing, in Spoletta, the nature of a willing soldier who enjoys doing his superior’s bidding, the more nefarious the better.

Stefano de Peppo adds to the vocal and dramatic ensemble as a gently curious sacristan who converses easily with both Angelotti and Cavaradossi and as one who sincerely goes about his religious duties. Jacob Hanes is stern as the jailer in charge of Cavaradossi and Angelotti. The one thing I would have toned down in this production is the constant violence the jailer shows towards his captives.

Ryan McGettigan’s set of Sant’Andrea, Scarpia’s office in the Castel Sant’Angelo, and the roof of the Castel reinforce the authentic feels of Summer’s production. Paul Kilsdonk’s lighting brings these settings to more palpable life while creating the mood for crucial scenes. Marie Miller’s costumes are perfect for the characters and their various situations.

“Tosca” was performed three times at the Princeton Festival. It closed on June 17. For other Princeton Festival events, visit www.princetonsymphony.org/festival.