Philadelphia Orchestra presents Puccini's 'Tosca'

The staging itself — credited to director/designer James Alexander — is the main problem. A concert hall is not an opera house; it has different dynamics and limitations that cannot be easily surmounted. Alexander uses the Conductor’s Circle directly above the stage as his playing field, which has the height of a theatrical stage but presents its own challenges.

The protective railing that juts across this area creates obstructed views, and it becomes increasingly impossible to ignore the half-dozen vacant rows behind the performers, who were mostly stationed front and center. Aside from occasionally placing the chorus in those seats during Act I, Alexander left the area expansive and empty.

Honoring tradition?

The program states that the production’s donor requested a “traditional” Tosca. That mandate comes through in the period costumes and conventional blocking. But some design elements are patently ridiculous.

Why does the painter Cavaradossi have an easel but no canvas? And why, during Act I’s culminating scene — set in a Roman church — is a papier-mâché thurible lowered from the ceiling over the parquet? Patrons sitting on the ground level won’t be able to see it, and it obstructs the stage picture for those sitting in the upper decks.

After a mostly banal second act, things turned downright tacky for Act III, which takes place on the roof of the Castel Sant’Angelo. The act opens with the sweet song of a shepherd boy (treble Ethan Lee at the second performance), who is here festooned with a set of angel wings that look like two diapers taped to his back. Their significance becomes clear in the opera’s final moments.

Tosca ends with the titular diva leaping to her death after it’s discovered that she killed lecherous Baron Scarpia. Obviously, that kind of stagecraft can’t be replicated in concert. Upon Tosca’s final cry of “Scarpia, Avanti a dio!” (“Scarpia, we will meet before God!”), the angel/shepherd reappears and leads Tosca to Heaven.

On the opposite side of the stage, a projector unspools a slideshow of gaudy religious iconography. It looks like a nun’s Pinterest page.

Just do it

The best way to honor the tradition of the piece in an orchestral setting would have been to dispense with the half-assed stage business and let the singers and musicians do what they do best: perform the score. Since none of the three principal singers show themselves to be particularly compelling actors, it would have removed the impetus to over-emote.

One can achieve levels of resonance and balance in concert that are lost in staged opera, but those levels don’t come through if you’re trying to replicate the opera-house experience.

American soprano Jennifer Rowley joined the cast just two weeks ago, stepping in for the ailing Sonya Yoncheva. Rowley’s sung Tosca before, but her performance betrays little idiomatic flair or connection to character. When she picks up the knife she will use to kill Scarpia, she examines it the same way one might inspect a melon at the supermarket.

Rowley sounds healthiest in her middle register. Her top notes can turn unpleasant, and her widening, pitch-obscuring vibrato runs dangerously close to a wobble. Audibility can also be an issue for her, particularly when the orchestra plays at full force.

I had no trouble hearing tenor Yusif Eyvazov, the evening’s Cavaradossi — and sometimes, that was the problem. Volume and ardency are not the same things, and I often found myself wanting a more classically beautiful sound in the role.

Eyvazov had some elegant moments, particularly in the second act. However, he reverted to grandstanding for Cavaradossi’s Act III solo, “E lucevan le stelle” (“And the stars were shining”).

Baritone Ambrogio Maestri doesn’t have the menace (or the vocal weight) one wants for Scarpia, but he compensates with great diction and musicality. Bass Richard Bernstein (Angelotti) and tenor Greg Fedderly (Spoletta) both excel and the Philadelphia Symphonic Choir makes a distinctive impression under Joe Miller’s direction.

Unfortunately, bass Kevin Burdette shamelessly cutes up his portrayal of the church Sacristan, tippling from an ever-present flask any chance he gets. I would have paid one of the children from the Philadelphia Boys Choir to smack the damn thing out of his hand.

That bit of business is yet another distraction from the wonderful work Nézet-Séguin does with the orchestra. His reading of the score is not yet perfect — a few sloppy entrances persist, and his tempos can turn self-indulgent — but it shows character and attention to detail that will serve him well as he ascends to the directorship of the Metropolitan Opera.

Let’s just hope that the next time he conducts Tosca, he’s not saddled with such a silly production.