★★★★☆It was one of those nights at the opera where you just had to be there. The first act of Puccini’s Tosca has plenty of twists and turns, but whether the tenor’s voice is going to last the evening should not be one of the dramas. Alas it became pretty clear that Bryan Hymel as Mario Cavaradossi was succumbing to something nasty, and before the second act there came a dramatic swap: a 28-year-old Brit called Freddie De Tommaso, not officially down to sing the role at Covent Garden until Saturday, was coming on instead. And so he became the first British tenor to sing the role at this address in almost 60 years (the last was Charles Craig in 1963), or atSponsored

Source: The Times December 09, 2021 23:53 UTC