Tosca review – full of thrills but star soprano Ausrine Stundyte doesn’t quite rise to this challenge

The latest revival of Jonathan Kent’s familiar Covent Garden staging of Puccini’s Tosca was originally planned for the house debut of Ausrine Stundyte, the Lithuanian dramatic soprano, much admired on the European mainland in such fearsomely demanding roles as Strauss’s Elektra, Katerina Izmailova in Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and Renata in Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel. In fact, her actual debut took place at short notice last month when she took over as Elektra from the indisposed Nina Stemme for three performances in Christof Loy’s new production. I heard the last of them and thought her remarkable in it. Her Tosca struck me as less successful.

She was not on her best form vocally on opening night, for starters. This is a big, warm voice, capable of soaring comfortably over a large orchestra, but the lustre in her tone, so impressive a fortnight ago in Strauss, was much less in evidence here. In the last act she sounded tired: O Scarpia avanti a Dio didn’t thrill as it should. She’s a superb actor, though, and the striking way she can fuse sound with sense remained more or less intact in a characterisation of some complexity. The suggestion of transgressive pleasure at the thought of an amorous tryst in church with Marcelo Puente’s Cavaradossi is telling, as are the blind fury as well as the revulsion she feels for Scarpia (Gabriele Viviani) in Act II, and the traumatised disgust at her own potential for violence as she later recalls her murder of the latter.

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Viviani’s voice is an attractive mix of velvet and steel, though he snarled his way melodramatically through the first act, only striking form in the second, where he was admirably sadistic and threatening. Puente is dramatically convincing as both lover and revolutionary, though his handsome, bronzed tone now turns edgy under pressure at the top, and he, like Stundyte, was flagging a bit by the end. The smaller roles are cast from strength and really register, with Grisha Martirosyan an intense Angelotti and Henry Waddington’s Sacristan more serious and thoughtful than most. Karen Kamensek’s conducting, meanwhile, is absolutely terrific, spine-tingling in the way she gradually ratchets up the tension. Big voices onstage mean she can really let rip at the climaxes to thrilling effect, though there’s also plenty of focused detail in the playing, from the amorous harp and strings that accompany Tosca’s first appearance in church to the eerily hissing cymbal strokes that mark the arrival of the firing squad at the opera’s close.