The Lyric Opera Orchestra ranged from sounding serene and sumptuous to molten and terrifyingly charged.Ĭonductor Eun Sun Kim provided precise support for the singers. At Lyric as well, she made a debut of rare eloquence, meticulously supportive of the singers, who must have loved working with her. She wowed audiences last summer with the Grant Park Orchestra at Millennium Park in performances of another very familiar work, Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony, which under Kim seemed fresh and new. The music itself could not be more grandly persuasive under guest conductor Eun Sun Kim, who is now music director of the San Francisco Opera. The Ponnelle production (helmed insightfully here by director Louisa Muller) still electrifies with its passion and subterfuge, its reversals and political terror. Performances at the Lyric continue through April 10. It has since played around the world and is now under the stewardship of the San Diego Opera. The production is a lavish classic that first appeared on the San Francisco Opera stage in 1972. There is much to admire in Lyric’s grand mounting of this vintage Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production, starring American soprano Michelle Bradley in her Lyric debut as the charismatic diva, Argentine baritone Fabián Veloz as her conniving nemesis Scarpia and American tenor Russell Thomas as Cavaradossi. Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s production opens in Rome’s Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle. In the tumultuous context of this historic moment, the imponderables that Puccini and his librettists explore so deftly seem starkly relevant. Little wonder, then, that someone had the idea of bringing in the Lyric Opera Chorus to sing the Ukrainian national anthem as prelude, to a vociferously supportive crowd on opening night March 12.

She will kill the ruthless Scarpia, who holds Cavaradossi captive. Cavaradossi and Tosca are trapped in history’s maw. But this is 1800 Rome, combustible and turbulent, controlled by Baron Scarpia, chief of police.

Napoleon will abandon those ideals and crown himself Emperor in just a few years.

The violent circumstance of Puccini’s beloved opera – set in 1800 as Napoleon’s revolutionary republicans are coming into the Italian peninsula from the North, and the Austrian monarchy is holding onto territories further South – is that both the painter and Tosca will die for their loyalty to the same ideals that fired the American Revolution.

Scarpia (Fabián Veloz) is bent on ruthless control.

Tosca opera in the park