Violence, torture, murder: TOSCA is brutal. Why has the opera been such a hit over the years?
Because it’s also got that lovely, graceful music. TOSCA is like a 20-year-old Scotch. The first time you try it, you’re going to wince. But gradually you acquire a feel for the subtleties.

What’s more important: beauty or pain?
Let’s be honest: audiences want to see emotion, but they want it to be conveyed by the beauty of the music. No one wants a tenor who’s so wracked by sorrow that he can’t hit his notes. That’s not why they go to the opera.

What is it about the Cavaradossi role that does it for you?
The biggest potential stumbling block comes right at the start. I come on stage and launch straight into »Recondita armonia« and everyone’s waiting for the famous High B at the end of the aria. Even Placido Domingo told me once: »You know, Jonathan? The odds are even that I’ll trip up on it.«

How do you take on the mindset of a man as battered and maltreated as Cavaradossi?
I can’t say I can really relate to the stuff he has to endure. The score is what gets me emotionally to the point at which I’m crying out in pain. The music’s so well written that it’s no great feat of acting for me to be yelling and yelping.

Your cries can be heard coming from an off-stage torture chamber, out of the sight of the audience. Is it really you doing the shouting and screaming?
There are two kinds of shouting. There’s the stuff that’s meant to be sung - by me, logically. And then there’s a final cry of pain - horrendous and drawn-out, as stipulated in the libretto – and usually someone else takes care of that. Right after that I’ve got to sing the famous High A-sharp in »Vittoria, Vittoria«. I can’t run the risk of ruining my voice in the moments before.

You play a painter and intellectual, young and good-looking. How important are good looks on stage?
It always comes down to the role you’re singing. Is the singer a credible person to be embodying that particular character? If the singer bears little physical resemblance to the character described in the libretto, the audience have to do a mental adjustment. They project their assumptions and fantasies onto the singers, so it can’t hurt for singers to bring some measure of physical attraction to their role.

In TOSCA we have brutal action being nicely described. Quite Hollywood-y, don’t you think?
I wouldn’t say that. A Hollywood film has to engage with the expectations that its viewers bring to the film. TOSCA, on the other hand, is a shock to the audience system. My parents were horrified when they saw me on stage as Cavaradossi for the first time. The rape and carnage were too much for them; how could opera be so nightmarish? It took a video of another production with minimalist stage set for them to grasp and appreciate the beauty and profundity behind the surface brutality. The difference between Hollywood and opera is that you’ve got to see TOSCA at least twice to get it.

And you may then see two quite different operas?
TOSCA is fiction, which may be why it lends itself to experimentation. I’ve sung Cavaradossi not just in a period production (Rome circa 1800) but also set in outer space, in a kind of white cube and lately in a winter landscape featuring a stark tree plus dangling body parts instead of the ornate church. I sometimes get the impression I’m accompanying Cavaradossi on his interdimensional journey through time and space. The life he leads is always the same but led in very different worlds.