Grading Tosca's emotional curve is an extremely important task for the soprano undertaking the role, because it's easy for her to sound like Floria One-Note, endangering audience involvement in the climax in Act II. Demus did as well as anyone could do in that job. She sang beautifully, and with control and variety, for the entire evening. Comfortable with the full range of the part, a true dramatic soprano, her payoff came, obviously, with "Vissi d'arte" (I lived for art), in which the simple, small phrases of the beginning gradually built to the soaring final phrases. As Demus collapsed in tears on stage, the total effect was overpowering.

As Mario, Bongers was wonderful, even in his difficult opening aria, in which Puccini writes directly into the register break of the tenor voice. He has a free upper register and a secure full tone in the sweeping lyrical phrases, and he built "E lucevan le stelle" (And the stars shone) to a natural climax. His best acting moment came in Act III when Tosca tells him about the orders for his execution. She believes it's a charade but he clearly sees through the trick and genuinely grieves. But he gallantly keeps it from Tosca. Although some people understand the dynamics of this scene, Bongers expressed the emotions clearly, and made the audience feel his brief hope dying, and then his effort to swallow the knowledge and to put on a good face for his love (not always successfully).

(And by the way, how does one square the terrible irony of this duet, so compactly expressed by Puccini, with the view that he was a one-trick pony with no depth or complexity? One should also go back and listen to the final minutes of Act II, where Puccini shows how thoroughly he had mastered Wagnerian motivic techniques, weaving an incredibly tight structure around Tosca's actions.)

Roberto Gomez' Scarpia was strongly and securely sung and appropriately demonic. His boots looked a little big, and he used too much finger-pointing and feet-spread-wide stance to indicate "man of action." Lacking the velvety darkness of tone of the best Scarpias, he compensated with high energy. This was a Scarpia who commanded by gesture and ferocity, not by authority and reputation. The whole scene up to Scarpia's murder, in fact, was played with unusual dramatic intensity, with Scarpia pressing himself on Tosca even before they come to their arrangement (as the stage directions request). And perhaps, given the present time, it was not inappropriate to emphasize this character's common thuggishness.

Igor Viera (Angelotti), an excellent performer, was in wonderful voice. As Spoletta, Benjamin Scott was a moderately effective singer but a good actor. Roger McCracken delivered the Sacristan's grumbling lines with conversational ease, as he must, and displayed a good bass voice. He dropped character a couple of times to look at the conductor in the scene where he sends the choirboys off to practice a Te Deum.

The orchestra came up against a common Tosca problem: The winds were off in the placement of notes all through the opening scene and almost always in the fast, complicated orchestrations of the flight theme. They practiced during the second-act intermission, but shouldn't they have done that before the show? Most of the audience had paid money, after all. Palmer's conducting was fluid, following the singers, and allowing lyrical phrases to expand, stopping the orchestra for the applause spots, but still shaping the dramatic arc of the scenes.

By now we're used to the fact that the orchestra lacks enough bass. The persistent attempt to compensate and fill in the orchestrations with a synclavier is only marginally useful. And the critical pealing of bells at the end of Act I, which could have been prerecorded and amplified, didn't come through strongly. But it didn't matter in the larger scheme of things and no one should be put off from seeing this terrific production by these caveats.