Last updated 05:17, Friday, 28 November 2008

Tosca, The Sands Centre, CarlislePuccini’s Tosca is the most dramatic of operas. Its mix of sex, blackmail, torture, murder and suicide stunned audiences when it was first performed in 1900 and earned it the epithet, “a shabby little shocker”.

Ellen Kent’s version, sung in Italian with English surtitles, features a compact set suited to a touring production. This pared-down approach serves to highlight the drama as the events of a single day in Rome in 1800 unfold.

This is first and foremost a dramatic production that fairly fizzes along to its bloody climax.

Musically, the highlight was Irakli Grigali’s Cavaradossi.

The Georgian tenor’s sonorous voice showed real warmth and purity of tone.

Vladimir Dragos made a splendidly malevolent Scarpia, at first thuggish and lecherous, then menacing and Machiavellian.

Soprano Elena Dee in the title role gave a measured performance that blossomed in the second-act aria Vissi d’arte and the final duet with Cavaradossi, O dolci mani.

The Sands is not ideally suited to opera. The orchestra is obtrusively bang in front of the stage. But such was the intensity of this performance you barely noticed.

The near sell-out audience will be back, I expect, for Ellen Kent’s Aida on February 15.

JULIAN WHITTLE