Tosca, Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles - review

Placido Domingo should know his way around Puccini's Tosca: he first performed in it as a boy, tolling the bells for mass in Act One. Now, some 60 years later, he is conducting it at the Los Angeles Opera. And yes, he has only just finished making his Nabucco debut in London. What's age 72 these days?

The great Spanish-born tenor-turned-baritone is on the singers' side, says Tosca director John Caird, who is adding a growing roll call of opera productions to his matchless record in British theatre. While always faithful to the score, Caird pops in some directorial touches. An angelic girl materialises in each act – a penitent at the church of Sant'Andrea della Valle in Rome (spectacularly realised by British designer Bunny Christie), perched high among the hoarded artworks of vicious Scarpia's lair at Castel San Angelo, and beckoning Tosca to the sheer drop at the edge of the execution yard.

It's a bloody business too, Tosca carving into a rapacious Scarpia with cut after cut and slashing her own throat before her fatal fall. The violence and danger is all in Puccini's chilling music, unlike Lado Ataneli's dramatic last gesture as Scarpia. In his death throes he grabbed melodramatically at the air – to audience giggles. Was that Caird's plan? By no means, he told me later. Ataneli had improvised. And they had had words about it…

No such black comedy from Sondra Radvanovsky, every inch the diva as Tosca, magnificent in a sparkly bustle. (My neighbour was even more anxious about this than about the traffic getting here: "All that blood on a white dress. Will it come out…?") The audience leapt to its feet at Radvanovsky's curtain call. The voice may oscillate a little, but here she can do no wrong. With tickets from $19, pretty much full houses are on the cards until the end of the run on 5 June.

And that's with The Marriage of Figaro next door at the LA Phil in the Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert hall. Here Gustavo Dudamel is conducting a hugely entertaining, semi-staged performance wittily designed by hip French architect Jean Nouvel (with costumes by Azzedine Alaia), until 25 May.