The latest revival of Jonathan Kent’s familiar Covent Garden staging of Puccini’s Tosca was originally planned for the house debut of Ausrine Stundyte, the Lithuanian dramatic soprano, much admired on the European mainland in such fearsomely demanding roles as Strauss’s Elektra, Katerina Izmailova in Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and Renata in Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel. In fact, her actual debut took place at short notice last month when she took over as Elektra from the indisposed Nina Stemme for three performances in Christof Loy’s new production. I heard the last of them and thought her remarkable in it. Her Tosca struck me as less successful.
She was not on her best form vocally on opening night, for starters. This is a big, warm voice, capable of soaring comfortably over a large orchestra, but the lustre in her tone, so impressive a fortnight ago in Strauss, was much less in evidence here. In the last act she sounded tired: O Scarpia avanti a Dio didn’t thrill as it should. She’s a superb actor, though, and the striking way she can fuse sound with sense remained more or less intact in a characterisation of some complexity. The suggestion of transgressive pleasure at the thought of an amorous tryst in church with Marcelo Puente’s Cavaradossi is telling, as are the blind fury as well as the revulsion she feels for Scarpia (Gabriele Viviani) in Act II, and the traumatised disgust at her own potential for violence as she later recalls her murder of the latter.
