Fort Worth — The 2012 Fort Worth Opera Festival opened at Bass Performance Hall on Saturday with a soaring and seductive production of Giacomo Puccini's musically gorgeous and theatrically dramatic Tosca, directed by Daniel Pelzig with music director Joe Illick conducting the superb 60-member opera orchestra. The 30-member chorus, supplemented by a 15-member children's chorus, is integrated seamlessly into the moment, delivering a hushed "Te Deum" in the church or an ominous cadence when violence erupts.

Andrew Horn's magnificent 35-foot sets, the tallest ever installed in Bass Hall, recreate the grandeur of an ancient church and a castle battlement in Rome of 1800. Ray Diffen's traditional period costumes are sumptuous, detailed but not fussy, allowing the characters to sweep us into the action—and that they do.



-- Martha Heimberg, Theater Jones

Click here to read the full Tosca review.