Company conveys drama of ‘Tosca’

Conductor Dean Williamson and stage director Bill Graham led the Spokane Opera across another threshold in the company’s history Friday with its first performance at the Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox. The vehicle for the occasion was Puccini’s ever-popular “Tosca” in a production that pleased both eye and ear.

The cast was led in the title role by Leslie Mauldin, a soprano who has appeared in the Spokane Opera often enough to be considered a regular. Mauldin was at her best in the soft beginning and growing intensity of Tosca’s centerpiece aria, “Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore.” And she was very effective in the romantic duets with her lover Cavaradossi, played by tenor Mark Thomsen. And he with her.

Mauldin could have shown more spitfire in the jealous outburst of Act I and in Tosca’s Act II struggles with monstrous police chief Baron Scarpia. But Mauldin looks smashing and sings beautifully. And her suicide leap from the parapet of Castel San Angelo was breathtaking.

Thomsen proved a steadfast Cavaradossi after some unsteadiness of pitch in his first aria, “Recondita harmonia,” sung surprisingly but effectively slower than most performances I’ve heard. He mostly resolved the pitch issues and came into his own as Act I progressed, and he was quite dramatic (and suitably bloodied) in the torture scene of Act II. Thomsen ended the scene with a blazing “Vittoria! Vittoria!” as he learned of Napoleon’s victory at the Battle of Marengo.

Thomsen was moving in Cavaradossi’s pensive Act III aria “E lucevan le stelle” and tender as he addressed Tosca in “O dolci mani.”

Despite the opera’s title, the character who really motivates everything is Scarpia. Charles Robert Stephens was a grimly effective Scarpia, both in singing and acting – unctuous, devious, lecherous and unremittingly brutal. The part does not call for much “beautiful” singing, but Stephens capitalized on Scarpia’s malevolence and made the audience eager to see him stabbed to death by Tosca in Act II.

On opening night Friday, the orchestra was sometimes too loud. This was especially true of the accompaniments for the lighter-voiced Mauldin. But Osbourne McConathy’s reduction of Puccini’s symphonic-size orchestra to an ensemble of 17 was effective. And conductor Williamson, an experienced man of the theater, kept things together and expressive.

In the secondary roles, Max Mendez was impressive as the fleeing revolutionary Angelotti and, later, as the Jailer in Act III. Victoria Perri sang sweetly as the Shepherd Girl, setting the scene for Roman dawn as Act III opens.

Tony Caprile’s painted set handsomely filled the Fox’s large stage. A few details worried me: the absence of a statue of the Madonna in Act I that figures so prominently in the action and text; the absence of an open window in Act III to allow the tension-building music of Tosca’s cantata to drift into Scarpia’s room; and the lack of the Jailer’s desk with its quill pen in Act III – forcing condemned Cavaradossi to write his final letter to Tosca on a rough bench (presumably with a ballpoint pen).

“Tosca,” with its pageantry, violence and undercurrent of sex makes an ideal lure for newcomers to opera. There were many such initiates among the throng of high school students in the balcony – captivated, I hope, along with the rest of Friday’s sizable audience.