Full of thrills, Elena Stikhina is a superb actor but vocally needed a push. She was brilliantly supported by Fabio Sartori and Amartuvshin Enkhbat—with terrific conducting from Michele Gamba
Photograph: Brescia e Amisano © Teatro alla Scala
MILAN, ITALY — La Scala’s operatic seasons continue apace with Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, in a staging by Davide Livermore and conducted by Michele Gamba. It’s an absorbing, albeit distinctive piece of theatre. Puccini, as one might expect, carefully probes his protagonists’ psyches, often with fascinating results.
A psyche that brings us to the main thread of the story: Tosca is a political thriller, set in Rome in June 1800 during the Napoleonic wars—a time of great political unrest. The plot centres around three characters—Rome’s diva Floria Tosca, her lover Mario Cavaradossi (a painter and republican) and the corrupt Scarpia. Scarpia long lusts after Tosca, and the very moment he suspects Cavaradossi of assisting an escaped political prisoner, seizes the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
Moreover, he’ll manipulate Tosca into revealing the prisoner’s hiding place and Cavaradossi’s involvement and have her for himself. When Cavaradossi is captured, Scarpia offers Tosca a horrific bargain: she must give herself to Scarpia, or her lover is killed.
Photograph: Brescia e Amisano © Teatro alla Scala
The latest revival of La Scala’s staging featured Elena Stikhina, a Russian dramatic soprano, much revered on the European mainland in such fearsomely demanding roles as Čajkovskij’s Tatiana, Mimì in La Bohème of Puccini, among others. Her recent performances took place over two dates in March 2025 in Milan. I heard both of them and thought she was remarkable during her first. Her second struck me as less successful. She was not in her best form vocally on the second night.
Hers is a big, warm voice, capable of soaring comfortably over a vast orchestra, but the lustre in her range, so impressive earlier last week, was much less in evidence in the latter evening. In the second act, she sounded a little tired: Vissi D’Arte didn’t thrill as it should. She’s a brilliant actor, though, and the captivating way she can fuse sound with control remained more or less intact in a characterisation of impassioned love and reckless drama.
Photograph: Brescia e Amisano © Teatro alla Scala
Photograph: Brescia e Amisano © Teatro alla Scala
The suggestion of transgressive pleasure with Sartori’s Cavaradossi is striking, as are the blind rage as well as the revulsion she feels for Scarpia (Amartuvshin Enkhbat) in Act III, and the traumatised disgust at her own skill for violence as she later remembers her murder of the latter.
Enkhbat’s voice is a compelling mix of emotive depth and velvety steel, striking through the second act, where he is admirably potent and threatening. Sartori is dramatically convincing, too, though his tone turned edgy when projecting at the top and flagged a tad at the end. Gamba’s conducting, meanwhile, is spine-tingling in the way he gradually ratchets up the drama. Lest we forget, the big choral voices nailed the climaxes to a thrilling effect, offering an absolutely terrific Te Deum in all its sweeping intensity.
by Chidozie Obasi