One of the big mistakes that’s made by operatic directing today is to treat opera as if it were a David Mamet play; whereas opera, in which people sing their thoughts, feelings, emotions, is a completely different animal than anything that purports to be naturalistic.
Apropos of Tosca, I think I said it pretty well in City Arts two yeas ago:
“Verismo opera, of which Tosca is one of the canonical examples, is a style of hyper realism; it is not naturalism. The great Toscas of old, as well as their stage directors, seemed to take to the opera more organically—creating searing theatrical experiences as a result—by accepting that Tosca herself was so mercurial that she made sense dramatically by not making sense. Tosca contains all emotions not just because all human beings potentially do, but because she’s a great performer and has to have them all readily available at her disposal. She epitomizes the protean nature of the theatrical animal and the theatrical impulse.”