As financial experts continue to look for indicators as to the status of the economic recession, a trend in Palm Beach County may hint that its grip is on the decline.

It’s the opening, or reopening, of live music nightclubs, which historically attract people only if those people have money to spend. That’s the mantra of club owners, who realize that they’re in a risky business even during prosperous times.

When their cash flow dwindles, audiences get offered less quality, original, creative live bands -- and unfortunately, more karaoke, DJs, solo and duo acts with pre-recorded backing tracks, amateur open mike nights, and dance clubs (see much of downtown West Palm Beach). Or venues close down completely.

Yet the Bamboo Room, located at 25 S. J St. in Lake Worth (561-585-2583, www.bamboorm.com), reopened last month in its original 1999-2008 location after specifically taking nearly three years off because of economic factors.

The iconic upstairs venue, historically more of a blues concert venue than nightclub, has featured since-deceased blues man Bo Diddley, plus John Hammond, NRBQ, Elvin Bishop, Hubert Sumlin, Col. Bruce Hampton, and Adrian Belew. Now open three nights a week rather than its original five, the club also offers a touch less blues, and a bit more rock and jam bands, among its proven regional-to-national acts.

“The economic numbers have been improving for some time,” says Russell Hibbard, who owns the Bamboo Room with his wife, Karen McKinley. “But I’ve been saying for years that it’s the area job market that really needs to get better for the club to do well. We’re hopeful.”

Interior changes include a revamped sound system and LED lights, and there are new benches and a second bar on the outdoor patio. Forthcoming cameras will illuminate the stage to high-definition flat-screens on the patio, and a 1950s-style diner will serve food downstairs.

Perhaps the biggest immediate difference is that Hibbard, once a mainstay, is now often absent. A half-dozen returning employees run the club, including manager Donny Becker and graphic designer Craig Young, who handle bookings.

“I’m mostly working on cars now,” Hibbard says. “I was training for the 12 Hours of Sebring race until we opened in ’99. So I’m getting back in shape to drive several endurance races per year.”

If the reopening mob scene from Feb. 17-19 was any indication, the Bamboo Room should again prove enduring as well.

Two blues and roots music venues are also breathing again in Delray Beach. Elwood’s Dixie Bar-B-Q, at 301 N.E. 3rd Ave., Delray Beach (561-272-7427), which also reopened in February, is still the no-frills juke joint it was from 1993-2009. Owner Michael Elwood Gochenour shut down the original site, only three blocks away, by selling it to the owners of the current, neon-lit restaurant Johnnie Brown’s.

Yet Johnnie Brown’s now sits on prime downtown real estate just east of the railroad tracks on the heavily traveled East Atlantic Avenue, while the new Elwood’s is three blocks north on the west side of those tracks. It’s near the residential Pineapple Grove area at the intersection of Northeast Third Avenue and Northeast Third Street, so the new locale will have to rely more on word of mouth than on passers-by. But the lingering scent of barbecue should waft at least as far as those townhouse windows.

“This is the old location of The Annex and the Two-Thirds Tavern, which did well here,” says general manager Shawn Metz, who was also GM at the original Elwood’s. “I'm optimistic. We'll have some of the old staff back; lots of the old signs and furnishings, and most of the bands that played before. So we should get some of the old patrons.”

The Back Room, at 2222 W. Atlantic Ave. (561-988-8929, www.thebackroombluesbar.com) is in its fourth different Delray Beach site and fifth overall (the latest, in Boca Raton, went dark last year). In its various locations, the club has hosted national touring blues acts like James Cotton, The Nighthawks, Bobby “Blue” Bland, John Mayall, Leon Russell, and Dave Mason.

John Yurt has owned the traveling blues revue since 1992, and had his grand reopening Friday (following his trial run, a maxed-out, sneak-peek reopening party on Feb. 19). It will be his fourth different location on Atlantic Avenue alone, this one tucked into the west end of the plaza on the southwest corner of Atlantic and Congress avenues.

Also in Delray Beach, the evocatively named, 500-capacity Pineapple Groove (19 N.E. 3rd Ave., 561-450-7953,www.pineapplegroove.com) started to feature everything from local to national acoustic singer/songwriters and rock bands to blues and R&B acts a few months ago. The 8,000-square-foot venue is the old City Limits, which also closed in 2009. But Pineapple Groove features technical upgrades that include high-definition cameras to record live music videos.

“There's a full high-definition production studio built-in now,” says executive producer Randy Grinter. “We pretty much went over the top between sound, lighting, projection and recording. We want everything here to be as good as it gets for both audience and performer.”

Pineapple Groove’s owners, brothers Mitch and Richard Clarvit, are both accomplished singer/songwriters. Operations manager Michael Stone, a musician, actor and the brother of actress Sharon Stone, has also helped the venue separate itself from the sports-bar pack.

“Mitch hosts a popular songwriter showcase,” Stone says, “where we book featured performers, as opposed to an all-out open mike night. And we’ve shot a live music video for David Shelley, who's a rising blues artist out of Fort Lauderdale.”

The new Delray Beach clubs join established live music providers like Boston’s On the Beach (40 S. Ocean Blvd., 561-278-3364, www.bostonsonthebeach.com), The Hurricane (640-7 E. Atlantic Ave., 561-278-0282, www.hurricanelounge.com), Johnnie Brown's (301 E. Atlantic Ave., 561-243-9911, www.johnniebrowns.com), Paddy McGee's (307 E. Atlantic Ave., 561-865-7341, www.paddymcgeesdelray.com), Dada (52 N. Swinton Ave., 561-330-3232, www.dadadelray.com), and Kevro’s Art Bar (166 SE 2nd Ave., 561-278-9675, www.kevroart.com). The result is a live music renaissance on and around the city’s lengthy main drag, Atlantic Avenue.

Perhaps the strongest cause for economic optimism is fledgling area clubs featuring jazz. Opening such venues in the past had, sadly, only proven to be a sure-fire way to part with a thriving bank account.

Yet Apicus, an elegant Florentine restaurant at 210 E. Ocean Ave. in Lantana (561-533-5998), has offered jazz on weekends since late 2010, providing a counterpoint to the popular music at the Old Key Lime House (300 E. Ocean Ave., 561-582-1889, www.oldkeylimehouse.com). Florida’s oldest waterfront restaurant, this Key West-style wooden structure is located only a few doors down on the small town’s popular waterfront thoroughfare.

In Lake Park, the small, atmospheric Fusion Lounge (758 Northlake Blvd., 561-502-2307, www.fusionloungepalmbeach.com) started serving up live jazz and blues on weekends last summer.

Within the expansive north end of Palm Beach County, the Fusion Lounge joins long-standing live music venues like the black box-style variety club the Orange Door (798 10th St. in Lake Park, 561-842-7949, www.theorangedoor.com), the rock club Swampgrass Willy’s (9910 Alt. A1A in Palm Beach Gardens, 561-625-1555, www.swampgrasswillys.net), Irish pubs Paddy Mac’s (10971 N. Military Trail in Palm Beach Gardens, 561-691-4366, www.paddymacspub.com) and Rooney’s Public House (1153 Town Center Dr. in Jupiter, 561-694-6610, www.rooneyspublichouse.com), and Chef John’s (287 E. Indiantown Rd. in Jupiter, 561-745-8040), a gourmet restaurant that owner John Jones prepared into a blues club as well.

In Lake Worth, Dolce Vita (609 Lake Ave., 561-493-3330) is a wine bar that’s featured live jazz on Saturdays since it replaced the former Soma Center a few months ago.

“I play there in a trio with keyboardist Brad Keller and singer Alex Bach,” says West Palm Beach bassist Randy Ward, “and we usually rotate a fourth person as a special guest. We've been there for a couple of months, and more and more people seem to be showing up each week.”

If the music scene in the northern Lake Park-Palm Beach Gardens-Jupiter tri-city area is growing, and Delray Beach clubs are now burgeoning, then Lake Worth has exploded. Its main downtown stretch, Lake Avenue, covers only a handful of blocks, making it comparable in scope to Lantana's quaint Ocean Avenue. Yet Dolce Vita and the Bamboo Room are now part of a dozen live music clubs in the 18-square-block downtown area surrounding it.

Others are Little Munich (806 Lake Ave., 561-932-0050, www.littlemunich.com), Igot’s Martiki Bar (702 Lake Ave., 561-582-4468), Bizaare Avenue Cafe (921 Lake Ave., 561-588-4488, www.bizaareavecafe.com), Havana Hideout (509 Lake Ave., 561-585-8444, www.havanahideout.com), Brogues Irish Pub (621 Lake Ave., 561-585-1885, www.broguespub.com), the Lake Worth Rum Shack (606 Lake Ave., 561-588-2929, www.myspace.com/lwrumshack), South Shores Tavern (502 Lucerne Ave., 561-547-7656, www.southshorestavern.com), The Cottage (522 Lucerne Ave., 561-586-0080), Propaganda (6 S. J St., 561-547-7273, www.propagandalw.com), and Mother Earth Coffee (410 2nd Ave. N., 561-460-8647, www.myspace.com/motherearthcoffee).

The Cultural Plaza Stage, located on M Street between Lake and Lucerne avenues, and the Bryant Park band shell, on Lake Avenue at the Intracoastal Waterway, are two other popular destinations for frequent special and multi-band events.

Smatterings of venues in Riviera Beach, West Palm Beach, Boynton Beach and Boca Raton, although quite spread out, also feature live music in-between these busy musical areas. But Lake Worth’s new openings over the past three years, and particularly the Bamboo Room reopening in February, have made its downtown area particularly energetic, vibrant and crowded.

Nashville may have the nickname of “Music City” cornered, but this small “Music Town” now looms large within what’s once again the growing live music scene of eastern Palm Beach County.

There are times when the stronger regional opera companies mount Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca to exploit every emotion: love, hate, seduction, torture and betrayal. Each is accented and the audiences go home satisfied.

This was not one of them.

Palm Beach Opera’s version, directed by Massimo Gasparon, had none of the blood lust one associates with this opera: Tosca’s knife, a letter opener, had no blood on it when she withdrew it from Baron Scarpia. The production reeked of European refinement, and the version I saw Saturday night was missing the chills and thrills and the energy that Puccini’s music infuses in it.

Opera diva Tosca is in love with the painter Cavaradossi. He’s helped a political prisoner escape from Castel Sant’Angelo, and faces the firing squad of Baron Scarpia, Rome’s chief of police. Hoping to free her lover, Tosca, almost succumbs to the wiles of Scarpia but obtains a handwritten passage to freedom from him before stabbing him to death.

But Scarpia has the last word. Instead of dummy bullets, which he and Tosca agreed to, Cavaradossi is plugged by live shells and dies. To escape Scarpia’s pursuers, Tosca jumps to her death from the castle wall.

Stage director Gasparon had some original touches I hadn’t seen before. In Act I, in the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, he has the choirboys circle the sacristan, reaching into his apron for “goodies” he keeps there. A deft touch. And, in the procession of church dignitaries before the service begins, a tall, regal, Madonna-like woman, dressed in white and blue, kneels opposite Scarpia. Was it his wife? Or a depiction of the Blessed Mother? Whatever she represented, it was quite effective.

In Act II, the director has Tosca placing the candelabra from his desk at the foot of the dead Scarpia, instead of arranging a cross on his chest, which is usual. In Act III, when Cavaradossi asks for writing paper, he must fall to the ground to write his farewell to Tosca. Normally, a small table is provided. This new direction distracted greatly from the tenor’s last aria, E lucevan le stelle.

Making her debut in the role of Floria Tosca was soprano Tiffany Abban. At times in her recitatives, Abban tends to lower her head onto her chest and her sound is muffled, making her diction unclear. When she looks up, the voice is expanded and its purity of tone is released through the house.

Her Vissi d’arte in Act II won rapturous applause, and indeed it was well-sung. She is a young dramatic soprano who will develop nicely over time. Her acting was accomplished, too, especially in the moments after Scarpia’s death as she stealthily crept away.

Mario Cavaradossi, sung by tenor Warren Mok, was a disappointment. His voice lacks support, and so he pushed it to the limit. Consequently, a distinct “hard” sound was produced, which was not very attractive to hear. After his early first aria, Recondita armonia, which wasn’t very good, it was all downhill for Mok. Even his acting was stiff and unconvincing.

Baron Scarpia was beautifully sung and acted by baritone Stephen Powell. Again, I must fall back on the word “refined,” for his was a nuanced interpretation of the role of Rome’s dastardly police chief, guaranteed not to scare the 11-year-old sitting two rows behind me.

Matthew Burns was just fine as the revolutionary escapee, Angelotti. His rich bass stood out in Act I, but instead of seeming like a man on the run, the director had him casually singing his lines as if there would be no trouble in slipping through Scarpia's tightly knit web.

Matteo Peirone, the sacristan, was superb. His lovely voice and cheeky interpretation won many hearts. Evanivaldo Correa was good as Spoletta, Baron Scarpia’s right-hand man. He gave the impression he could do the baron’s job in a trice. Kenneth Stavert sang Sciarrone, and Greta Ball’s shepherd boy was excellent, very boyish-sounding. The last three singers named are all in the Young Artists program at Palm Beach Opera.

The chorus sounded great, and were well-trained by Greg Ritchey. The orchestra also sounded particularly good under the baton of artistic director Bruno Aprea. They made lovely music all night long.

At times they were so good, it felt better listening to their playing than watching this stage version of Puccini’s masterpiece.

The Palm Beach Opera’s Grand Finals Vocal Competition is set for 3 p.m. Sunday, April 10, at the Kravis Center. Next year marks the 50^th season of the company. Scheduled operas are Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette, and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Also scheduled are two gala concerts of arias and ensembles to celebrate the company’s anniversary. Call 833-7888 for more information.

Time was, and not all that long ago, that the only way South Florida could hear the Verdi Requiem in concert was to wait for the Florida Philharmonic to schedule it or hope that a big touring ensemble would put it on.

This year, there have been two major local performances of this 1874 masterwork: Once in January at a concert by the Palm Beach Opera Orchestra, with high-profile soloists including Dolora Zajick, and this week in four concerts by the Master Chorale of South Florida, accompanied by the Lynn Philharmonia.

You wouldn’t expect a student group such as the Lynn conservatory orchestra to be quite as polished as the opera professionals, and by extension, for the performance as a whole to be on that level. And while indeed it wasn’t up to quite the same caliber, Saturday’s performance by the Master Chorale was exciting, engrossing, and completely faithful to Verdi’s compositional aesthetic.

It lacked certain subtleties of interpretation, but in every other important respect this was a strong reading of the Requiem, and its successful performance over the course of the four concerts marks a major advance for South Florida classical music-making.

To begin with, there was the orchestra itself, which was excellent (and augmented by adult professionals). There were two or three noticeable flubs in precisely the places where most orchestras have difficulty: The offstage trumpet passage in the Tuba mirum, which quickly righted itself, and the massed cello opening of the Offertorium, which had the usual intonation problems on the climb up. But here, too, the cellists rapidly unified things when it came time for the main theme.

By and large, this was an orchestra with good string ensemble, strong solo work from winds and brass, and emphatic percussion. It was an orchestra that clearly was familiar with the music, and was able to play with impressive dynamic range, from the hushed tremolandi that introduce the Hostias et preces tibi to the mighty whirlwind of the Dies irae.

Conductor Albert-George Schram led the combined forces of chorale and orchestra with precision and thorough professionalism. Saturday night, sudden shifts in dynamics were right on the money, as were virtually all the entrances and endings, including such tricky moments as the delicate switch to A major from A minor in the opening Requiem movement.

His tempos were largely on the swift side, and in some cases, a little too fast for comfort, particularly in the Confutatis section of the Sequence, when his insistence on driving the central three-note motif forward left his soloist too little time to breathe or give the aria enough impact. The Sanctus, too, while ably handled by the chorus, could have been slightly slower, and there were other, smaller moments when Schram might have been better served by a touch more deliberation.

And yet overall, he led the piece masterfully: His forces knew exactly what he wanted and when to give it to him, and they followed him admirably.

The soloists also did well, in varying degrees. Soprano Amanda Hall, a master’s student at Yale, had the freshest voice of the four, with a nice, full sound in her upper reaches and a warm, communicative approach (particularly in the Recordare and the closing Libera me). Some of her vibrato was rather wide, which was also true of mezzo Christin-Marie Hill.

Hill, a repeat Tanglewood fellow, has an unusual bronze quality to her voice that at its best is quite compelling (Quid sum miser?) and in its shakier moments Saturday night inclined to shrillness. She also snapped off the ends of her initial phrases in the Liber scriptus, no doubt in strict fidelity to the score, but the effect was odd, as though she had been cut off in mid-sentence.

Tenor Scott Ramsay demonstrated a very pleasant, lightly colored voice that had muscle when it needed it, such as in the high B-flat that closes the Ingemisco. He chose a very soft voice for the Hostias, but while that was effective for the text, a little more power would have brought out the tenoristic thrill of the melody better.

Bass Wayne Shepperd has a friendly, baritonal voice that blended well with the other soloists but was somewhat less effective on its own. Without sepulchral tones, it’s hard to make the big pauses Schram called for in the Mors stupebit work all that well, and as mentioned before, the too-fast pace of the Confutatis did Shepperd no favors.

For its part, the Master Chorale (the former Florida Philharmonic chorus) showed the benefits of careful drill in the way the group sang the exact rhythm on the words Qui salvando salvas gratis, as well as the closing triplet on the words Libera me. Its sound was full and hefty, and the balances between men and women were good.

It was also gratifying to hear the chorus sing a piece that gave it so much to do. Many of the big works the chorale has done in recent years have been much bigger workouts for soloists than the chorus, and it’s been hard to gauge exactly how well the group sings. The Verdi Requiem, however, showed that it’s capable of handling difficult fugal writing such as the Te decet hymnus and Sanctus, and that it is able to offer a blemish-free unison line such as in the Agnus Dei.

Saturday’s concert was a crucial one for music development. The Lynn Philharmonia, which just 20 years ago was a string orchestra at the Harid Conservatory, is a skilled, agile assemblage that began this year tackling the Mahler Fifth and next year will take on John Corigliano’s First Symphony, a most demanding piece. True, it got some middle-aged help in the ranks for the Requiem, and its earlier concerts this season have been inconsistent, particularly in the brass sections.

But if you care about classical music in Palm Beach County, you’ll want to consider attending the last performance of the Requiem this afternoon at the Wold Center for the Performing Arts on the Lynn campus. Even five years ago, a performance of this work by student and community forces here would have been hard to imagine -- Brahms or Faure, yes, but Verdi, no.

Now, however, ambition for the arts here has been joined by serious accomplishment, and audience members today can see a chorale that has managed to remain standing for almost a decade despite the loss of the orchestra that originated it, and a symphonic ensemble that increasingly is providing fine training for its student members, as well as more satisfying concerts for its auditors.

This Verdi Requiem series is nothing short of a milestone, whatever its faults, and I feel certain the Lynn and Master Chorale communities will look back on these performances a few years hence and see that they marked the beginning of a newer, bigger era.

The Verdi Requiem will be performed by the Master Chorale at South Florida and the Lynn Philharmonia at 4 p.m. today at the Wold Center on the Lynn University campus. Tickets: $35-$50. Call 237-9000 for more information.

In order to maximize the chances of being produced in these precarious economic times, most writers now limit themselves in their plays’ cast size and physical requirements.

But every now and again comes an Angels in America or a Coast of Utopia, from playwrights who dare to think on a grand scale, resulting in works resulting in peak experiences for their audiences.

Just such a play is Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County, a three-and-a-half hour epic whirlwind, requiring a cast of 13, a major theatrical meal amid a theatrical landscape of so much snack food. In it, Letts mines the familiar territory of the dysfunctional family, but he does so with such fury and force that he wipes away our memories of other dramatic sagas on the subject.

Still, a script of this magnitude is not an easy matter to produce, let alone for a company like Actors’ Playhouse of Coral Gables, whose strength is musical theater. Yet Letts’ play has obviously gotten the creative juices of director David Arisco flowing and the material has attracted some of the region’s finest acting talent. The result is a production that is likely to be a landmark of South Florida theater for years to come.

You could call August: Osage County a tragedy, except it is happening to a family other than your own and watching the verbally abusive meltdown is so much fun.

It all takes place in the sprawling three-story home of the Weston clan (artfully designed by Sean McClelland), located in a small Oklahoma town near Tulsa. The family is headed, at least briefly, by Beverly Weston, an alcohol-fueled professor and poet, who we hear describing his marital woes to a prospective housekeeper. He hires her and walks away, never to be seen alive again, but was Beverly’s death a drunken accident, foul play or suicide?

The answer is of little concern to his coarse, pill-popping wife Violet who convenes the family -- three grown daughters and their somewhat significant others -- to wait for word of Beverly’s situation and then to attend his funeral.

At they wait, the impromptu family reunion becomes a clawing match, with secrets exposed at regular intervals and the weak pounded into submission by the stronger.

Annette Miller, last seen at Actors Playhouse as the wily, outspoken title character in Martha Mitchell Calling, dominates the evening as sharp-tongued Violet, staggering through life in a drug-induced fog, just sober enough to lash out at whoever is in her path. That is usually her three daughters, the eldest of whom, Barbara (a steely Laura Turnbull), pulls an Alexander Haig and declares herself in charge of the calamitous situation.

The middle daughter, Ivy (Kathryn Lee Johnson), has been her parents’ caregiver, but wildly underappreciated, and destined to be pushed aside. Youngest daughter Karen (Amy McKenna) has unwisely gotten engaged to a shady Miami businessman (Stephen G. Anthony), whose roving eye locks onto Barbara’s teenage daughter Jean (a crafty Jackie Rivera).

They are at the core of August: Osage County, but even the secondary characters, like Violet’s abrasive sister (Barbara Bradshaw), her meek husband (Peter Haig) and their embarrassment of a son (Erik Fabregat) have their stinging moments.

The centerpiece of the play is a family dinner that begins civilly, but soon escalates into general combat. One would think there was nothing left to reveal by the third act, but Letts saves his most devastating revelations for the evening’s final third.

Arisco lets the play breathe a bit, but knows how to turn on the theatrics for maximum effect. Only the most honest of theatergoers will see themselves among these irredeemable souls, but they will probably recognize some of their family members.

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, Actors’ Playhouse, 280 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables. Through Sunday, April 3. Tickets: $42-$50. Call: (305) 444-9293.

* * *

By a quirk of scheduling, across town in Coral Gables, Letts’ follow-up to August: Osage County, the more benign, but worthy Superior Donuts is playing at GableStage. It is a consciously conventional play, even without comparing it to Letts’ Pulitzer Prize winner, and surprisingly upbeat when judged against Killer Joe or Bug, two other scripts by Letts that GableStage has produced.

Not that Superior Donuts is without conflict or violence, but unlike his other works, you can sense the playwright letting the audience off the hook with a concluding suggestion of hope that his other three plays certainly do not have.

The action all takes place inside a North Side Chicago donut shop, a rundown neighborhood coffee-and-cruller joint that 60-ish Arthur Przybyszewski -- the “P” is silent -- long ago inherited from his father. But even though the area has gone to seed, Starbucks has just opened across the street and it looks like Arthur’s shop is on its last legs.

Prior to the play’s start, someone has broken in and defaced the shop’s interior, but Arthur remains unfazed, or perhaps he gave up on any grand aspirations for the place long ago.

If so, he has his hollow complacency shaken by the arrival of Franco Wicks, a 21-year-old street-smart black dude, who talks his way into a job and into Arthur’s heart. Full of bravado and non-stop gab, he totes with him a messy manuscript of what he calls his “Great American Novel,” but he also carries the burden of $16,000 in gambling debts.

At its best, Superior Donuts draws the growth of the unlikely friendship of Arthur and Franco, as they trade wisecracks and world views. Franco is brought vividly to life by a very promising young African-American actor, Marckenson Charles, whose swagger and verbal confidence are both ingratiating and persuasive. He plays off of the naturally ebullient Avi Hoffman, here underplaying as a man whose life went on hold when he fled to Canada during the Vietnam War, evading the draft.

At its worst, Franco is confronted by his tough-talking bookie (Gordon McConnell), a guy of indeterminate nationality, who threatens him over his overdue loan. Unlike the rest of the play, which breathes with such authenticity, this subplot feels like a bad rewrite of I’m Not Rappaport -- one of the final productions of Hoffman’s defunct New Vista Theatre Company -- even more so when Arthur ultimately decides to risk his life by standing up to the bookie in a brawl.

The resolution of the standoff is a credibility-stretcher. While Letts seems to be echoing the pipe dreams of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, he chooses to avoid the despair of that play’s conclusion.

As a result, Superior Donuts is a lot more upbeat than most of GableStage’s fare, though director Joe Adler does what he can to cover the proceedings with a layer of grit. In addition to Hoffman and Charles, he fills the stage with an on-target ensemble that includes John Archie and Patti Gardner as two of the Second City’s finest, Sally Bondi as a wry bag lady and particularly Chaz Mena as a Russian entrepreneur eager to acquire Arthur’s shop.

If you only have time to see one Letts play, you must opt for August: Osage County. But if you can also see Superior Donuts, you can sense the range of this writer who seems likely to be spinning tales onstage for a long time to come.

SUPERIOR DONUTS, GableStage at the Biltmore Hotel, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables. Through Sunday, April 10. Tickets: $37.50-$45. Call: (305) 445-1119.

Good singing can get an opera audience past uninspired acting, but when it comes to the heroine of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, it’s best to have someone who can do both well.

And on Friday night, Palm Beach Opera did.

In the Italian soprano Chiara Taigi, who opened its current run of Puccini’s “shabby little shocker” from 1900, Palm Beach Opera had an actress whose Floria Tosca was believable and sympathetic, passionate and action-dominating, and a singer whose mature, dark soprano had power, range and stamina.

Taigi was the focus of a very traditional production (set, as it’s supposed to be, in the Rome of 1800) that used the company’s modest resources shrewdly, and that absorbed its audience from the first moments and held them fast until the end. One excellent reason for that was Taigi’s fine performance in Act II, with a Vissi d’arte of high emotion and musicality, and in which her nervous jitters after stabbing Scarpia were nicely appropriate (if the subsequent throwing around of papers was a little overdone).

But she was an excellent Tosca throughout, making the most of a star vehicle whose play parent increased the luster of none other than Sarah Bernhardt. Taigi’s acting and musical chops were strong enough even to overcome moments of vocal shrillness on top and some cracking in the lower reaches; these imperfections actually made her performance that much more credible and enjoyable.

As Cavaradossi, tenor Riccardo Massi did a respectable job, and he has a large, warm voice that at its best is quite pleasant to listen to. He sounded somewhat strained in the top of his range, but in a way that suggested an engine not firing on all cylinders rather than one pushed to the breaking point.

His Recondita armonia and E lucevan le stelle were carefully and capably sung, but they lacked a strong sense of passion, and E lucevan in particular didn’t have the feeling of desperation and extravagant emotion it needs to be a show-stopper.

Claudio Sgura, as Scarpia, has a good, solid baritone voice, and he was effective enough in the second act to earn plenty of hearty boos at the curtain call. He was less impressive in the closing of the first act, when he needs to become the second center of the melodrama, especially in the great Te Deum scene that ends it.

Partly because of Massimo Gasparon’s staging, which pushed him over to the side to make room for the church procession, Sgura, who sounded underpowered, wasn’t able to give us the skin-crawling sense of a man whose lusts for flesh and violence are pushing him over the edge, and who knows it.

The first act’s best work came from a minor role, that of the sacristan, as sung by the Italian baritone and character specialist Matteo Peirone. Seen here last month as a very fine Don Alfonso in Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte, Peirone (who probably makes an excellent Gianni Schicchi) was equally good this time around as the fussy caretaker, singing with strength and offering a winning portrayal of a flustered, comic Everyman.

Also good in a minor role was bass Matthew Burns as Angelotti. He has a deep voice of real quality, and it’s regrettable that Puccini’s mastery of the theater led him to cut out so much backstory. A few more comradely minutes of Angelotti would have given us more of Burns’ singing to listen to.

Three of the company’s Young Artists – Evanivaldo Correa as Spoletta, Kenneth Stavert as Sciarrone, and Greta Ball as the shepherd – sang well, with Correa’s sharp-edged tenor making a good vocal contrast in his colloquies with Sgura. Good work was also to be had from the chorus in the Te Deum and the offstage cantata in Act II.

Conductor Bruno Aprea, like Taigi a native of Rome, led a brisk, powerful reading of this rich score, building steadily and surely to the conclusion of Act I, and giving the big Act II theme associated with the knife that Tosca will use to kill Scarpia a ferocious reprise after the black deed is done, casting a real sense of momentousness over the scene on stage. Except for intonation problems in the cello quartet during Act III, the orchestra played wonderfully, and indeed its performance was one of the high points of Friday evening.

Director Gasparon, who made good use of the Sarasota Opera set in constructing effective tableaux, sacrificed some of the drama’s effectiveness in Act III with a staging choice that had Cavaradossi singing the sweetness of Tosca’s hands on the other side of the stage from her. Much of their action together saw them singing while apart, which possibly was meant to focus on each character’s individual anguish, but which didn’t make much sense dramatically, especially after the heat of Act II.

His staging of the shepherd’s song in that act, which had Ball sitting on a parapet serenading soldiers, didn’t work well, either, since the song just adds a moment of Roman-dawn coloring, and needs to be a drive-by song, not a spotlight moment.

Tosca will be repeated tonight at the Kravis Center beginning at 7:30 p.m. Soprano Tiffany Abban stars as Tosca, with Warren Mok as Cavaradossi and Stephen Powell as Scarpia. Chiara Taigi returns for the 2 p.m. Sunday performance, and Abban is back for the 2 p.m. Monday show. Tickets range from $23-$175. Call 833-7888 or visit www.pbopera.org.