Victorien Sardou’s 1887 play, the basis for Puccini’s opera “Tosca,” had all the elements of a 21st-century thriller. But Puccini clothed his libretto in plush musical garb that tells the tale with just enough respite from the violence, to let the listener relax and enjoy the arias and duets that have made this work immortal and beloved.
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One of my high school music teacher's favorite lines was "The most dangerous musician is not a trumpet player that can play really high, but a trumpet player who THINKS he can play really high." The same is true of vocal performance. The one vocal performer that can really kill a performance is not a soprano with their high c's, but a baritone who thinks he is a tenor. Not only is the strain of singing out of range immediately evident in the sound produced (as noted in the review), but it can really damage the voice of those performers. I mixed a production of Jesus Christ Superstar in high school wherein one of the featured soloists was a sophomore baritone who thought he was a tenor. Hearing him practically scream to hit his notes was painful for everybody involved. Because his part was out of his range, it was too physically demanding for the sound technicians ask him to sing that same line over and over again at sound check. So, consequentially, that line always sounded terrible during the run of the show. It was a situation that definitely could have been avoided had the actor known his range.
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