Once you see “Tosca,” you never forget it. But I never expected to be haunted by it!

I remember the first time I saw it on PBS back in the 1980s. It was one of those “Great Performances” broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera, with Hildegard Behrens in the title role and Cornell MacNeil as the villainous Scarpia. Placido Domingo was Cavaradossi. From the perspective of my 19-year-old self, Domingo, especially, seemed a little long in the tooth to be cutting the romantic figure of a dashing young painter turned political prisoner. Funny to think back on it now, as he must have only been in his 40s at the time. And he’s still singing!

Now, 40 years on, what a difference it makes to experience the work with someone with the pipes AND the youth to really put it across. Last night at The Princeton Festival, tenor Victor Starsky sang Cavaradossi with power and vigor. In fact, all three leads, including soprano Toni Marie Palmertree as Tosca and baritone Luis Ledesma as Scarpia, were extraordinarily well-matched, at every turn heightening the drama and intensifying the passion, in what is really a lean chamber piece writ large by Giacomo Puccini. Frankly, I never recognized its genius before.

Never had I found myself so engrossed in the work’s interweaving themes, both musical (the interplay of heart-rending leitmotifs clearly paving the way for Hollywood film scores of the 1930s & ’40s) and textual (the libretto a fascinating blend of religion, politics, and sexuality). It really got me thinking about how each of the characters relates to love, death, and God in various combinations. And I thought “Tristan” was perverse in its celebration of love-death! Clearly, Wagner was not Italian.

It’s the kind of reflection one engages in when one experiences opera as theater, as opposed to listening to it on a recording, where the music and the quality of the singing take precedence. In the opera house, you get the total experience, as you’re also focusing on the action and the words.

“Tosca” really begins to insinuate itself as it explores various permutations of faith and blasphemy, eroticism and nihilism. Far from the laugh-out-loud experience of that PBS “Tosca” that had me howling in Act III, the opera, when done right, makes you forget how trashy the subject matter really is. It’s no longer the “shabby little shocker” derided by musicologist Joseph Kerman, but rather like Victor Hugo at his most twisted. You just don’t know how to feel about certain things, but you can’t help FEELING. Is there a more desolate aria than Cavaradossi’s “E lucevan le stelle?” Sometimes you’re just screwed. Interesting, though, that the character couches thoughts of impending doom in meditations on all the hot nights he’s going to be missing out on with Tosca. Molto Italiano!

Tosca’s thoughts, on the other hand, in her own expression of hopelessness, the aria “Vissi d’arte,” turn on contemplations as to why God has deserted her. For Scarpia, virile, dangerous, and subtle, well, he sings – in church no less – “Tosca, you make me forget God!” Because he’ll do anything to have her.

Ledesma not only has the voice, but the imposing carriage to convince as the morally bankrupt chief of police, who is the recipient of the opera’s most awe-inspiring leitmotif. He is an edifice in himself, the embodiment of power corrupted. We hear echoes of it, even as Tosca enacts a pious ritual with candles and crucifix over his corpse, as if to note, how the mighty have fallen.

Scarpia is no cartoon villain. He invokes Iago in the first act. Even in death, he dominates. It’s not for nothing that Tosca’s last line is “I’ll see you before God, Scarpia!” The full extent of his calculated evil comes to light only posthumously, and he looms over the fates of the other characters, just as the grim prison of the Castel Sant’Angelo looms over Rome.

For such a swift opera (Puccini was ruthless in trimming numbers from the libretto, based on a sprawling melodrama conceived by Victorien Sardou as a vehicle for Sarah Bernhardt), the characters are fascinatingly layered. Some contemporaries complained about the resulting sacrifice of lyricism (alleged), but the drama is inexorable. Since there are no set pieces or flashy effects (beyond perhaps that chorus at the end of Act I), it’s essential that all the singers be able to pull their weight, vocally and as actors.

The opera certainly offers a plum part for a soprano – a diva playing a diva – and Palmertree left nothing on the table. Like Starsky, she brought it when it counted. Tosca’s journey takes her from the comparative innocence of love, religious devotion, and petty jealousy in Act I to desperation and resourcefulness, as she pushes back against Scarpia’s objectification and harassment in Act II, to the point that she takes matters into her own hands. Palmertree made you feel the anguish of Tosca trying to keep her lover’s secret, even as she hears him being tortured in the next room, only to have to rein it in a few moments later to strike the right tone of introspection to navigate her dark night of the soul in “Vissi d’arte.”

The Princeton Symphony Orchestra was in impressive tune with its conductor, Rossen Milanov, who led the performance as to the manner born. Milanov has ample experience conducting opera and ballet in the U.S. and Europe, but it’s only comparatively recently that we’ve been exposed to that facet of his artistry in Princeton. Nothing I’ve heard at the Princeton Festival since its post-COVID resurrection in 2022 prepared me for what I heard and saw last night. Milanov conjured waves of sound and navigated passionate breakers, but he did so most undemonstratively, as a collaborator, yes, but also as a sensitive accompanist. Conducting opera is like steering a ship, and no matter how turbulent the drama got, Milanov at the helm kept his cool and rode the blue. I don’t know if it’s just that I haven’t been paying close enough attention, but even when conducting the orchestra’s regular subscription concerts at Richardson Auditorium, he really does seem to be more relaxed and just getting better all the time.

Also, not to be undersold was the production’s stage direction by Eve Summer. Even though I emphasize “Tosca’s” intimacy, the opera would seem to call for grand sets, at least for the outer acts. How do you believably conjure the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle on a stage the size of the one inside the performance pavilion on the grounds of Morven Museum & Garden? And how on earth do you hope to convey the height and imposing grandeur of the Castel Sant’Angelo, and still have room for a firing squad, much less to pull off the opera’s famous ending. Yet Summer and scenic designer Ryan McGettigan made it work. A masterstroke came at the end of the first act, when the chorus (prepared by Vinroy Brown), attired in cowls and miters, processed from the stage up and down the aisles of the tent to surround the audience with spinetingling sonorities.

Furthermore, I must say, I expected something far less spectacular from Tosca’s final act of defiance. Instead of simply dropping from the parapet, as I anticipated, Palmertree suddenly put on a burst of speed, dashing along the length of the battlement, at the far end flinging herself headlong into oblivion. Kudos for going for broke! I am nearly always slammed by a wave of emotion at the end of an opera, but the music, the visual, and the audience reaction really put it over the top.

I admit, when I first heard that the opera this summer was going to be “Tosca,” I had my doubts. Previously, the post-COVID, Princeton Symphony Orchestra incarnation of the Princeton Festival had dealt solely in comedy – “The Barber of Seville,” “Albert Herring,” “Cosi fan tutte,” “The Impresario” and “Scalia/Ginsburg” – certainly apt, given the season and the venue. These all had their enjoyments, but I was unprepared for “Tosca,” which despite the stage limitations, was a triumph.

Anything else this week is bound to seem anticlimactic, but there’s something to be said for just relaxing and enjoying a concert. The Princeton Festival runs through Saturday. For the remainder of this year’s schedule, visit https://www.princetonsymphony.org/festival.