The summary verdict on Opera Santa Barbara’s season-opening production of Tosca, last Saturday at the Granada: Touche.
Puccini’s beloved and tragic opera is beautifully sung and realized, resourcefully produced, and made for a perfect vehicle for the company that undauntable OSB director Kostis Protopapas has kept in motion through pandemic deprivations and is steering through a transition period. Normalcy and solvency, in opera as elsewhere in high culture, had yet to land, but this Tosca treated a nearly full house to a rousing taste of what makes live opera such a unique and satisfying experience. Done right, as it was here, it is well worth the price of admission (which, in the current case, is a flexible and affordable price).
Grand opera comes together with a hefty price tag, by its nature. But creative end-runs and resourceful thinking can go a long way toward effective expressive ends, on a budget. In this production, deftly conceived by stage director Layna Chianakas and set designer Yuki Izumihara, the stage set consists primarily of a large, bare metal scaffolding, which serves a post-modern multi-purpose function, referring to the opera-within-opera aspect of the tale about an opera diva. It also serves as a perch on which we find artist Mario Cavaradossi (consistently impressive tenor Adam Diegel) working on his painting of the Madonna in the opening scene, and delivering the famed aria " Recondita armonia " ("Hidden harmony"). Come opera’s tragic finale, Tosca literally exits stage left from the scaffolding. Exit is the operative word.