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'Tosca' soars as the 2006 season opens

Cincinnati Opera gave its audience what they like best Thursday night at Music Hall: an A-list opera, with spectacular romantic-realistic sets, great singing and a genuine diva.

Starring in Puccini's popular "Tosca," first production of the opera's 2006 Summer Festival was soprano Aprile Millo in her Cincinnati Opera debut. Fresh from "Toscas" in New York (Metropolitan Opera), Chicago (Lyric Opera) and Milan (La Scala), Millo inhabited the role of opera diva Floria Tosca with ease, winning the hearts of the crowd as well as that of her lover, the painter Cavaradossi, sung by tenor Antonello Palombi.

This "Tosca" was well-suited to be "your first opera," as billboards around town have been suggesting. No sooner had the curtain risen on the spectacular Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production - Act I transpires inside Rome's Church of Sant'Andrea della Valle - than the audience was hooked.

Italian born Palombi, a rising star, displayed a pure, heroic tenor with arresting high notes and compelling acting, winning the biggest plaudits of the evening for his arias "Recondita armonia" and "E lucevan le stelle."

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