Puccini’s La Tosca
(August-September 2025)
by Francisco Salazar
Daniele Rustioni Leads Memorable Reading With an Unforgettable Chiara Isotton & Roberto Frontali
“For this new production, the company has lined up an outstanding cast with a great conductor and a production that sets the work in a fascist society to bring the story into contemporary times. The result was a thrilling musical experience...
...The biggest highlight of the evening was without a doubt Daniele Rustioni. The Italian conductor has a way with the orchestra making it sound polished but at the same time expressive. He is able to pull many details forward without ever dragging the orchestra and most importantly he follows the singers to perfection. On this evening he brought the menacing colors in Act one as Scarpia entered the scene while he showcased a lighter and romantic timbre in the orchestra for Tosca and Cavaraodossi’s opening duet. The “Te Deum” was another highlight as the chorus blended well with the orchestra never covering Roberto Frontali in the ensemble.
In Act two, Rustioni moved the music forward with propulsion and had the orchestra grow in sound as Puccini’s music took on threatening sounds and more dramatic weight. In the torture scene, the music started with a mezzo forte and eventually reached a fortissimo with brass section and timpani ringing out in full force. One could feel the tension building as Tosca’s lines rose to the highest extensions of her voice. The orchestra was in tandem with Chiara Isotton and created perfection in the scene. And then there was the timpani march that leads into the “Vissi d’arte.” The rhythm was ominous but as the music flowed into the soprano’s famed aria, it took on a lush sound filled with expressive colors. Same could be said for the “E luevan le stelle,” which emphasized the desperation of Cavaradossi’s pain with the violin’s crescendoing to a forte. The fanfare that opens the third act was also a highlight as it showcased an immaculate brass section that quickly transitioned to the nostalgic music that leads into Cavaradossi’s famed aria. The detail in each line was clear and Rustioni never drifted from the forward momentum nor did he ever indulge in slow tempi. The cello ensemble that leads into “E lucevan le stelle” was played with gorgeous lines with the cellists sliding into each note with expressive quality and bringing out the tragic feel to the music.
The final notes of the opera as Tosca jumped were also harrowing and impactful. The orchestra’s thunderous sound vibrated through the hall with immense sound even after the music had stopped. ...Overall this was a memorable evening thanks to Daniele Rustioni, Chiara Isotton and Roberto Frontali’s committed performances.”
by Hugh Canning
Daniele Rustioni conducts a Puccini thriller and Mahler in Venice
“An all-Italian cast working with one of the most exciting of the younger generation of Italian conductors proved to be reason enough for catching the new Tosca at Venice’s Teatro La Fenice. In a new staging by the Andorran director Joan Anton Rechi, Chiara Isotton incarnated the titular prima donna, with Riccardo Massi as Cavaradossi and Roberto Frontali as Scarpia. Daniele Rustioni conducted.
...conductor and principals deserved credit for seizing a musical triumph for the jaws of a fiasco. Like his erstwhile mentor, Antonio Pappano, Rustioni yields to none of his contemporaries in his impassioned enthusiasm for Puccini: the Fenice orchestra knows him well and delivered playing of consistent transparency, revealing the chiaroscuro of Puccini’s ‘mosaic’ score with clarity and beauty, while punching out Scarpia’s signature chords with thunderous menace. Rustioni proved himself a sympathetic accompanist, too, in the lyrical expanses of Tosca’s and Cavaradossi’s reflective arias, coaxing both Isotton and Massi to deliver the composer’s lines with the necessary Puccinian legato.
...Despite a staging of questionable pertinence, this native Italian ensemble delivered a full-blooded account of Puccini’s operatic blockbuster, hitting all the G-spots in this spectacular, medium-sized auditorium.”
“Since leaving his post as music director of Opéra de Lyon at the end of last season, Rustioni has recalibrated his career to boost his credentials as a symphonic conductor. While his opera dates grow ever more prestigious - he will conduct new productions at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich and La Scala, Milan in the coming seasons - on September 5 he presented himself to the Fenice public in a performance with its orchestra and soprano soloist, Rosa Feola, of Mahler’s Symphony No 4.
...Rustioni adopted leisurely tempi for the ‘deliberate, unhurried’ marking of the opening movement, a lilting pace for the grotesque Scherzo, relishing the woodwindy quirky dance rhythms of the Ländler(trio) sections. The Fenice strings may lack the plush tonal underlay of, say, the Vienna Philharmonic - the orchestra that Mahler clearly had in his mind when writing his large scale music - but its leaner texture, and Rustioni’s penchant for instrumental transparency certainly highlighted the woodwind and brass solos. The expansive slow movement ‘Ruhevoll (calmly), poco adagio’ unfolded in rapt paragraphs, Rustioni revealing the double-variation form as the harmonic core of the work. In the ‘child’s vision of heaven’ - the relatively brief finale - it was a surprise to hear an Italian soprano, but Feola is a long-time Rustioni favourite (I first heard her as Nanetta in his Falstaff in Bari as long ago as 2013) and though her sung German was not always accent-free it was clearly articulated and her shining bell-like soprano - nowadays an Alice Ford - retains a youthful innocence and radiance to convince in this music. As we are more likely to hear Rustioni in concert in the UK than in opera, it would be good to hear his Mahler with one of the leading British orchestras in the near future.”
by Roberto Mori
Per fortuna, dall’orchestra arrivano le atmosfere e i colori che la scena non riesce a definire. Daniele Rustioni legge Tosca non come un’opera verista ma come un dramma proiettato nel Novecento, riportando in primo piano quella ricchezza sinfonica che ridisegna di continuo il tessuto emotivo dell’opera.
Il direttore, attraverso un fraseggio ampio e mai forzato, con tempi non stringati ma sempre funzionali, riesce a garantire la continuità drammatica e musicale che Puccini esige, restituendo sia la tensione del noir che le morbidezze liriche e sentimentali. L’orchestra svela dettagli inediti e alterna sinuosità e dolcezze a momenti di grande drammaticità, mantenendo sempre un equilibrio con le voci che consente al canto di conversazione di emergere con naturalezza. L’approccio di Rustioni dimostra come il rispetto della partitura possa convivere con l’intensità emotiva: dalla buca emerge tutta la modernità orchestrale pucciniana che anticipa il linguaggio cinematografico, restituendo all’opera l’attualità che la regia cerca invano sul palcoscenico. Alla fine, resta la sensazione che questaTosca trovi nella direzione musicale la bussola interpretativa più coerente.
In sintonia con la lettura di Rustioni, Chiara Isotton disegna una Tosca centrata sul canto, lontana da eccessi veristici e facili effetti...”