What makes a performance electric?
That’s hard to pin down, but when it happens, there’s no mistaking that something very special is going on. The Met’s Tosca on January 17th (the third in a winter run of four) was a memorable case in point.
There was, to begin with, the cast: Sondra Radvanovsky, in a role in which she’s currently peerless, returning to the house after a season’s absence; that beloved Welshman Bryn Terfel, returning after over a decade’s; and the bronze-voiced Brian Jagde, steadily ascendant as a Met leading man. There was a palpable buzz in the capacity house – standing room was sold, for the first time in my post-pandemic memory – even before John Macfarlane’s dramatically mood-setting show curtain rose. When it did, conductor Xian Zhang’s sounding of the Scarpia motif had just the right degree of brutal intensity without overloading the decibels, and Richard Bernstein, as the on-the-run Angelotti, was visibly an exhausted man in emotional distress. Patrick Carfizzi’s familiar Sacristan was once again meticulously acted and honestly sung, free of generic buffo shtick.
Jagde’s “Recondita armonia” showed, to my delight, an immense improvement over his rendition of three seasons back, with a new care for phrasing and dynamics in place of assaultive (if exciting) power. Radvanovsky entered, and the two confirmed their charmingly light and easy rapport along with their well-matched vocal clout. And then came Terfel, scarily suave and sardonic – and if there’d been any doubt that this performance was going to sizzle, once the prima donna joined him onstage it vanished in a jolt of sheer star wattage.
This wasn’t the best-sung Tosca I’ve ever heard – that remains a Met performance of 1975 with Żylis-Gara, Bergonzi and Bacquier – but it likely was the most thrilling, with everyone working full-tilt to make sure the drama got its due. Along the way, though, there was some very fine singing to be heard, including splendid accounts of the opera’s two greatest hits: Radvanovsky’s “Vissi d’arte,” masterfully shaped and inflected, and Jagde’s “E lucevan le stelle,” delivered with a care for nuance that just wasn’t part of the artistic arsenal of his Cavaradossi in 2021.
Photo Credit: Evan Zimmerman / Met Opera
Bryn Terfel as Scarpia in Tosca at the Met
And Terfel? Well, in his 60th year he’s no longer the singer whose commanding Wotan helped offset the intrusive mechanics of Robert Lepage’s Ring in his mid-to-late 40s. The tone is a little rough and rusty, the line a bit bumpy these days. In fact, toward the middle of an intensely declaimed “Già, mi dicon venal,” as his Scarpia circled the center-stage supper table in predatory pursuit of Tosca, the voice seemed momentarily to disappear: was this, I wondered, accident or interpretive choice? I’m still wondering – and I still don’t care. Terfel’s Scarpia was projected with such utter conviction, so full of telling detail (a wandering hand, a chilling whistle to the tune of the offstage cantata) that I was enthralled.
He and Radvanovsky were partnering for the first time at the Met, but they played off each other like a seasoned duo of stage-savvy pros. When, kneeling beside his prone corpse, Radvanovsky uttered Tosca’s famous ironic epitaph, “E avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma,” her eerie laughter dissolving into sobs, I half expected this Scarpia to raise an undead arm and grab her.
They – all the singers – benefited from David McVicar’s strong, intelligent production (supervised here by Sarah Ina Meyers) in Macfarlane’s handsome décor. This is a Tosca whose “concept” is to respect and honor Puccini and his masterwork, still vital after a century and a quarter. Zhang, in the pit, showed a similar respect for the score and for her singers, which entailed an awareness of every bit of business – and every extramusical grunt, groan, gasp and sob – they were up to onstage. With so many master electricians on hand, wasn’t it almost predictable that this Tosca would deliver such an exhilarating jolt?
Photo Credit: Evan Zimmerman / Met Opera
Brian Jagde as Cavaradossi in Tosca
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Patrick Dillon, a native Detroiter, grew up with Canada just across the river, and later launched his career as a classical-music journalist at The Globe and Mail. Now a longtime New Yorker, he’s lucky enough to live just across Broadway from the Met.
