English Touring Opera's 11-week spring tour may not quite span Land's End to John O'Groats, but Truro to Perth is as near as dammit and all the more demanding for spring being mostly winter this year. Taxing tours need resilient voices and ETO's casting reflected that. While volume sometimes risked taking precedence over expressive quality, the intense colour of Puccini's score emerged with clarity, thanks to Noel Davies' authoritative conducting and Tony Burke's orchestral reduction. Julie Unwin assumed easily the diva demeanour Tosca must convey, but was less convincing when portraying her jealousy and desperation. Unwin was originally a mezzo and she uses that dark colour well and, if there is a slightly hard edge to the voice higher up, it had a searing effect. Her Cavaradossi, Michael Bracegirdle, was bracingly robust and never less than ardent, with Craig Smith a steely Baron Scarpia.

Tim Carroll's staging is more problematic. The single, solid black wall set permitted split levels for church, Casa Scarpia and the battlements respectively, but was confined in the extreme. The effect of Cavaradossi painting his Mary Magdalene portrait up high, without an easel and gesturing in thin air, was slightly vertiginous, and seeing everyone forced to duck their heads in order to exit stage left or right gave one a cricked neck in sympathy. The Cardinal's grand procession at the end of act one was necessarily diminished, too: for all their spirited singing, the chorus of monks, nuns and four choirboys cavorting on the parapet didn't quite do the trick. Tosca's final scramble up a roofer's ladder and her backwards drop to death was also a bit short on credibility, but it says much for Puccini that the drama of the music survived intact.

· At Kendal Leisure Centre on Friday (box office: 01539 729702). Then touring