At the Stadttheater

Opera thriller “Tosca” in all its beauty

Ivan Krutikov shines as the brutal police chief.

(Bild: www.karlheinzfessl.com/agb)

The Klagenfurt City Theatre kicked off the new season to great acclaim on Thursday with Giacomo Puccini's opera thriller "Tosca". The "Krone" attended the premiere of the world-famous opera thriller.

Time flies with this "Tosca". And the fact that the two and a half hours (including interval) are so entertaining is down to the real star of the sold-out opening premiere. Nicholas Milton at the podium of the outstanding Carinthian Symphony Orchestra proves to be both a prudent and spirited, somnambulistically confident wanderer through Puccini's melodramatic ups and downs, with his effervescent roar and intimate beauty of sound.

Powerful baritone and playful brilliance
Director Immo Karaman counters the musical opulence and playful splendor with a modern production that eschews visual appeal and embeds the story of love, passion, betrayal and death with coherent directorial accents in Rifail Ajdarpasic's all-purpose door walls (from panel construction to classicism). It only becomes clear at the end why Fabian Posca suffocates the lovers' rays under shapeless terrycloth bathrobes, sweater-pleated trouser disasters and horrible wigs, and provides the strongest image of this long and stormily applauded production. For Tosca will only wear the magnificent red velvet dress, a material metaphor of burning love floating in beige-brown gloom, after her death in order to scatter roses over her own corpse ...

As the brutal sadist police chief Scarpia, the expressive baritone Ivan Krutikov is in the best of hands both acting and singing-wise, Shelley Jackson is a solid Tosca with a rich soprano, tenor Alexandros Tsilogiannis a Cavaradossi with a soft melting voice.