Puccini would be tickled to see his Romantic painter trying his hand at Modernism.ĭuane Schuler’s excellent lighting adds sinister effects in Act One’s Scarpia-Tosca scene, and floods Act Three with warmth of daybreak, making the unimpressive sets look better than they are. Act One, Cavaradossi’s ‘madonna painting’ is the giant head of a woman, cut up into a triptych of jigsaw-puzzle pieces. Forget logic, it’s all raw violent emotions in this act. Tosca sings her famous aria standing up, to the ‘small madonna’ on top of the prompter box and under the watchful eye of the ‘big madonna’ on top of the crates. Act Two, Scarpia is downsized from his posh apartment in Palazzo Farnese to a dark warehouse with piles of crates.

In this shared production with Houston and Chicago, John Caird, the director, and Bunny Christie, the Scenery and Costumes designer, decided to play up the small role of political fugitive Angelotti by having his mannequin hanged above center stage in Act Three, drawing more mirth than horror from the audience. When Joseph Kerman, in his seminal 1952 book Opera as Drama, called Puccini's Tosca a “shabby little shocker”, in which all main characters die violently and ignominiously, he probably never thought the opera could be so entertaining as well.

Tosca opera cartoon