FROM AROUND THE WORLD: LOS ANGELES.(Review)

High on a wall, silhouetted against a lurid red sky, the dark figure of a woman gesticulates furiously with clenched fists. She looks like a predatory bird about to swoop down on the soldiers and police who stand frozen with horror in the prison courtyard below. She staggers back slightly but then moves forward again as if to leap upon her pursuers. Finally, with a desperate cry of "O Scarpia, avanti a Dio!" she turns to the crimson sky and hurls herself into oblivion.

The final bars of Puccini's Tosca provide a moment of epiphany for many opera-lovers, but with Catherine Malfitano in the title role and Ian Judge as stage director, the entire evening (June 9) was anything but business as usual. In the final production of the 2001-02 season, Malfitano was in good form vocally, and she embellished the role with remarkable dramatic insights. She was well matched by her colleagues, tenor Richard Leech as Cavaradossi and bass-baritone Tom Fox as Scarpia, both of whom managed to infuse Puccini's familiar melodrama with an unusually high degree of excitement.

Much of the evening, in fact, was over the top and into the Tiber even before Act III. Fox, elegant and sensual, began pawing Tosca long before his infamous, lustful cry of "Finalmente mia!" Following Tosca's "kiss," he grappled with his assailant, pressed her body to the floor and writhed in ...