Christopher Gray enjoys a first-class performance of Puccini's Tosca

After scaling the peaks of the Ring cycle last year in celebration of Wagner’s bicentenary, Longborough essays a less onerous ascent for its 2014 opener. But Puccini’s Tosca is still a major challenge for a company of famously modest dimension, and one must applaud all involved for delivering a production so thrilling and — under the sure control of conductor Jonathan Lyness — so musically accomplished.

Richard Studer, teamed with Lyness in many previous LFO successes, returns as director and designer. He updates the action for no very obvious reason (cheaper costumes?) to Mussolini’s fascist Italy and supplies an abstract set — rows of gold corinthian pillars at either side and an elevated cross-shaped platform centre stage — that serves well for all three of the opera’s locations.

Atmospherically lit by Wayne Dowdeswell, it looks best as Scarpia’s apartment in the Palazzo Farnese, the setting for Act II. I did worry, though, as Simon Thorpe’s powerfully voiced baron strutted the platform’s heights, proposing his evil love-for-a-life deal to Tosca, that he might be about to prefigure the diva’s death plunge to come.

Lee Bisset, seen here as the Ring’s Freia, Gutrune and Sieglinde, returns in the title role for another big sing — and some first-class acting. The sexual chemistry between her and her imperilled lover Cavaradossi (Adriano Graziani) is evident in their first long, beautifully nuanced duet. We witness their deep passion again, heartbreakingly, at the opera’s close on the battlements of the Castel Sant’Angelo as they plan a future we know will never be.

Before his seeming reprieve is delivered, the painter’s farewell to the world, E lucevan le stelle, is delivered almost as movingly as Tosca’s great aria, Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore, in the previous act.