The Desire That We Love

JEALOUSY AND DESIRE: Two emotions that provoke nearly all the pain we suffer and the pain we inflict. Each is a confluence of component emotions, making them hard to put into self-aware words. But they’re easily reflected in music, the abstract nature of which carries it deep into our emotional core. Put words to that music and the feelings those words provoke become much more compelling. 

Greer Grimsley as Baron Scarpia, Kellan Dunlap as Spoletta, 
Yongzhao Yu as Mario Cavaradossi, with Jabari Lewis and 
William Predmore, members of the ensemble. 
Photo Credit: Brent DeLanoy/The Glimmerglass Festival

Puccini’s “Tosca” was criticized by its premiere critics for being too haphazard in structure, too ghastly in subject matter, and even too musically ugly. Wrote a Boston critic: “The composer shows a well-nigh diabolical ingenuity in massing together harsh, ill-sounding timbres.” Added the New York Sun: “Both eye and ear are often offended by the consecutive fifths, raw harmonic progressions, and alterations of the tawdry with the solemn.” And a London critic concluded: “Should this opera prove popular it will scarcely indicate a healthy or creditable taste.”

It’s become popular enough that the opening-night performance at the Glimmerglass Festival looked impressively sold-out. If the century-and-a-quarter since the opera’s premiere has inured us to horrors like bloodshed and parallel fifths, we’re as susceptible as ever to the ravages of jealousy and desire. So while we may find Floria Tosca’s jealousy a bit excessive, we’ve each been through enough of it to see her point. Likewise, although our own bouts of sexual desire were enough to align us with Baron Scarpia’s longing for Tosca, we’re probably not torturing and killing the competition. And I don’t want to hear otherwise.

Michelle Bradley as Floria Tosca. 
Photo by Kayleen Bertrand/
The Glimmerglass Festival

Scaffolding and dropcloths cover the stage, but there’s the suggestion of a church interior. We begin in a welter of excitement as Cesare Angelotti (Donghoon Kang), a prison escapee, runs onstage, seeking a hidden chapel key. He finds it; he hides – just in time to avoid discovery by the Sacristan (Sergio Martinez), who has entered to clean up the place. And to greet the painter Cavaradossi, a cheerful Yongzhao Yu, there to finish his lifesize portrait of Mary Magdalene. She looks, notes the Sacristan, like a blonde woman who often visits the church to pray. No surprise, says Cavaradossi; he sketched that woman to incorporate her features into his magnum opus – and this sets the plot wheels turning.

Puccini finished the opera in 1899 and it premiered in January of the following year. Based on a play by the French writer Victorien Sardou, it preserves the setting of Rome in 1800 and the effects of the French Revolutionary War. Puccini turned it into a through-composed piece in three acts highlighted by what have become some of the best-loved arias in the repertory. 

Cavaradossi compares that portrait subject – who is Angelotti’s sister – with his beloved Tosca in the aria “Recondita armonia,” lauding the hidden harmony of contrasting beauty. This was Yu’s first chance to shine, and he did so with ease. He’s a rising star – in January he went on at short notice to sing Rodolfo at the Met – who brings to the stage a combination of a terrific voice and a compelling presence. 

Tosca enters, costumed in a dramatically yellow coat, sporting the kind of sunglasses that befit a famous singer. Right off the bat she’s jealous – she heard her lover talking to someone (it was Angelotti) and assumes it was a woman. We need that first aria to reassure us that, however striking the soprano may look, she also can sing. Michelle Bradley’s moment came with “Non la sospiri,” and we relaxed in gratitude. More would follow, of course. Did that aria also inspire Yu? He came back with his ode to her eyes, “Qual’occhio al mondo,” which became a knockout duet.

Yongzhao Yu as Mario Cavaradossi with ensemble members.
Photo by Kayleen Bertrand/The Glimmerglass Festival

Tosca leaves; Cavaradossi arranges to stash Angelotti in his villa; the Sacristan leads a chorus of villagers in a celebratory anthem to the news that Napoleon apparently was just defeated. Nicely staged and beautifully sung by a chorus that ranged from the very young to seasoned pros, who took a deserved bow at the end of the act.

But the act wasn’t over yet. Baron Scarpia sweeps in to inhabit the rest of the piece as one of opera’s finest villains. Greer Grimsley was costumed in a nondescript business suit and had the look of Vladimir Putin, albeit with more hair. He’s looking for Angelotti and suspects that Cavaradossi is involved. But when Tosca arrives again, he is suffused with desire. He artfully stokes her jealousy; after she rushes off to confront her lover, he gloats: “Now Scarpia claws a nest inside your heart!” and, as the tarps fall, the scaffolding is pushed aside, and the back wall is bathed in red, the chorus sings a Te Deum as Scarpia boasts, “Tosca, you make me forget God!”

This production, deftly directed by Louisa Proske, is set in a charmless 20th-century milieu that could double as a set for “The Consul.” Kaye Voyce’s costumes were appropriately drab while attractively designed, a kind of gulag Gucci touch, except for Tosca’s garb, which, in the second and third acts, featured a fantastically sparkly golden gown. All of it playing out on John Conklin’s sets, which, for the remainder of the piece, gave us (instead of Scarpia’s palace apartment) a soulless cop shop, an outsized map of Rome on the wall behind Scarpia’s state-office surplus desk. 

Greer Grimsley and Kellan Dunlap
Photo by Kayleen Bertrand/
The Glimmerglass Festival

Echoing the contrast of the end of the first act, the second begins with a contrasting pair of earthy events playing out on either side of the stage, but you need to see it for yourself. It certainly told us all we need to know about police-force mentality. We’re then treated to Scarpia singing ominously about his foreseen carnal success as a charming gavotte plays on the desk radio. Again it happens: As Cavaradossi is brought in and subjected to strong-arm questioning, Tosca’s singing can be heard. Such contrasts magnify the creepiness factor. Soon, of course, she arrives, but even if you already know the plot it’s not my place to spoil it for the few who don’t. 

But I’ll add a few more notes. Tosca’s biggest moment, the aria “Vissi d’arte,” finds her stage right, in a crouch in a bathroom. Not what you might expect, but it well-characterizes her mental state and Bradley gave a show-stopping performance of the aria. That bathroom figures importantly in some plot points as well. 

Likewise, Cavaradossi, a prisoner about to be executed in Act Three, lights up the stage with the aria “E lucevan le stelle.” He’s on his knees, begging for his life, it seems – but his thoughts are of his beloved. And it was another vocal triumph for Yu. The aria becomes the emotional core of this piece, portraying the true face of love even as it is Scarpia-sullied by the ugly grin of obsessive desire. And given the production’s time period and setting, Tosca’s finish made a lot more sense. 

An effective villain has to be played with a humanizing emotional range, and Grimsley did just that, making his evil moments all the more frightening and informing it all with a masterful voice that did ample justice to Puccini’s skillful application of the emotions of music. Alongside the riveting vocal talents and performances by Bradley and Yu was fine work in the smaller roles by Sergio Martinez as the Sacristan, Kellan Dunlap as Spoletta, and Luke Harnish as Sciarrone.

The score is laced with motivic elements, underscoring significant moments with melodies that offer revealing, sometimes contradictory commentary. The Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra is a body of first-rate musicians who prove their talent season after season, but here heard at their peak under the brilliant hand of music director Joseph Colaneri.

Before the start of the second act, a succession of quotes from the essay On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder were displayed upon a scrim. While they could be understood to apply to the politics of “Tosca,” I doubt if anyone confused their more important purpose as a call to take charge of our own benighted era, which demands the participation of all citizens in order to effect the needed change. Looking at the cast as the players take their bows, you see a multicultural array, a sea of differently colored faces. It’s worth reflecting that this variety, a variety upon which our country is based, is now under vicious attack. We need the arts (itself under attack) to remind us of our ideals; we need to find ways of personal involvement in order to preserve them. On Tyranny is on sale in the Glimmerglass gift shop.

Performances of “Tosca” continue in repertory through August 16, 2025; more information and tickets may be obtained at glimmerglass.org.

Tosca
Music by Giacomo Puccini
Libretto by Luigi Illica & Giuseppe Giacosa
Conducted by Joseph Colaneri
Directed by Louisa Proske
Alice Busch Opera Theater, The Glimmerglass Festival
Cooperstown, New York, July 11