Macau's one-time basketball arena is annually transmuted into a grand opera house and with Tosca, the Forum is magnificent.
No curtain separates the splendid Romanesque sets of church, palace and castle, all bigger than life. Choruses are hardly in the extravagant Turandot mode, but in the great climax of Act I, the accumulation of children, pedestrians, priests and a grand archbishop against the realistic church facade makes for splendid viewing.
Tosca is also splendid drama with nothing sentimental detracting from wickedness, agony, patriotism and tortures most foul.
The staging of first and third acts can be very moving, and Paolo Trevisi kept his characters in a constant state of flux. (Macau, unlike Hong Kong, does believe in opera as a kinetic spectacle.) The second act, with its Grand Guignol melange of seduction, murder and agony, is a musical triumph. But not even Trevisi could make it seem more than 1890s melodrama.
The voices presented a problem. Like a wonderful spectre of the past, Anna Tomowa-Sintow showed just what a powerful and seductive Tosca she once was. The voice is not the same as 20 years ago (and singing Vissi d'arte on her knees was no help), but she is still a great actress.
Warren Mok, though, has shed his pogo-stick acting, and his tenor is richer than ever, with a heart-wrenching Vittoria. His enunciation is ever clear, his innate operatic heroism almost inspiring.