Review: A vividly staged, thrillingly sung ‘Tosca’ opens the Dallas Opera season

The Tosca that opened the Dallas Opera’s 2023-24 season Friday night was grand opera at its grandest.

Puccini’s opera is high drama, of course: a tightening grip of love, jealousy, lust, political corruption, betrayal and murder. The opening night audience at the Winspear Opera House got a vivid staging and chills-down-the-back singing. Repeat performances get a strong “buy” recommendation.

The co-production from Cincinnati, Detroit and Montreal opera companies imposes no pretentious “concept,” no modernization of the circa 1800 Roman setting. As if peeling away layers of evil, set and costume designer Robert Perdziola gives us grand ecclesiastical spaces for Act One, a coldly formal office for the evil police chief Scarpia, a stark rampart for the denouement. Perdziola even gets liturgical vestments for the Act One “Te Deum” pretty much right.

Stage director Andrew Nienaber has deftly managed logistics and brought characters vividly to life. Thomas Hase supplies admirable lighting.

Ewa Plonka played the eponymous diva to the hilt, from flirtation to fierce jealousy, from connivance to desperate betrayal. There was more than a little silent-screen melodrama, but in this of all operas it fits.

Her soprano could blaze thrillingly on high, as well as flicker seductively. I’ve heard the famous “Vissi d’arte” aria more mellifluously sung, but never more emotionally.

At the end, because of back concerns, Plonka took no plunge off the parapet, just standing there as the lights went out. Surely a better resolution could have been devised.

A big draw was to have been star tenor Joseph Calleja in his Dallas Opera debut as Tosca’s lover, the artist Cavaradossi. He fell ill early in the week, though, so Jonathan Burton joined the final dress rehearsal and performed Friday night.

Not to worry: Burton delivered fiery vocalism to match Plonka’s, his theatrical ardor and vocalism always fitting the moment. Offhand, I can’t remember finer singing of the role. Calleja was thought likely to join subsequent performances.

Scarpia is so viscerally malevolent that his first appearance onstage should be chilling. Until the second act, Gihoon Kim came off as an only mildly sinister functionary. He was more persuasively oily as he tried to seduce Tosca, and he rose to quite a fury. He still never quite chilled the blood, and even his finely honed baritone could have used more brawn. But it was a very fine voice indeed, with formidable power when needed.

Andrew Potter was aptly scruffy as the political fugitive Angelotti, with just enough burr on the voice. Dale Travis was the endearing Sacristan, just comic enough without overdoing it, with a beautifully seasoned bass-baritone. Even the slighter roles were well sung: Thomas Cilluffo as Spoletta, Erik Earl Larson as Sciarrone, Sripal Medara Metla as the Shepherd Boy.

The chorus, prepared by guest director George Gregory Hobbs, made stirring sounds in the “Te Deum,” joined by young singers from the Greater Dallas Choral Society for Children and Youth (Kimberley Ahrens, director). But intonation got fuzzy in the offstage cantata outside Scarpia’s office.

With a sure sense of timing and musical interactions, music director Emmanuel Villaume made the orchestra as vivid a dramatic participant as anyone onstage. The tricky cello ensemble introducing Cavaradossi’s “E lucevan le stelle” wasn’t always fine tuned, but horns, led by Katie Wolber, played thrillingly, and clarinetist Danny Goldman spun out hauntingly lovely solos.

Details

Repeats at 2 p.m. Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday at Winspear Opera House, 2403 Flora St., Dallas. $15 to $450. 214-443-1000, dallasopera.org.

CORRECTION, Oct. 14 at 11 a.m.: An earlier version of this review misidentified the clarinet soloist. It was Danny Goldman.

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