Puccini's 'Tosca' with a Moving Difference at Pasadena's Pacific Opera Project

In a nice piece of innovative staging, the regional company Pacific Opera Project, are taking a dynamic approach to staging Puccini's Tosca. The Pasadena-based troupe will physically ask their audience to move with the action.

Act One, which of course is set in a Cathedral in Rome, will take place in a chapel in St James Methodist Church in Pasadena. Act two, which Puccini envisaged at Scarpia's Palace abode,will be performed at the church's regular theatre space. And Act Three - the ramparts of the Castel Sant'Angelo - will be in the church's courtyard.

Better-know companies might do well to emulate this kind of enterprising approach to staging. Of course, theater companies have done this kind of thing for years. But, though it's not unknown in opera, that art form still tends to stick to the tried and tested. Often for very good reasons. But too often.