Puccini: Tosca ****
Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, 7th April 2018
For decades, “historically-informed performance practice” has given audiences the chance to hear music as the composer may have heard it. But in terms of opera, why not what the composer saw? Alessandro Talevi’s 2015 production of Tosca for the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma boasts sets and costumes painstakingly recreated from Adolf Hohenstein’s designs for the 1900 première. The libretto is littered with detailed stage instructions. If period instrument performers can transcend dry-as-dust scholarship to make a performance leap off the page, can a “period production” still make Tosca leap off the stage? (Pun intended. Apologies.)
Svetlana Kasyan (Tosca)
© Yasuko Kageyama | Teatro dell’Opera di Roma
Read the full review on Bachtrack.